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'When it comes to mass killing of civilians, a curious Catch-22 comes into play. If editors do not see the story on TV, they do not believe it's news; if programme makers do not read it in the newspapers, they do not believe it's news.' August 24, 2004--Nearly a month after the U.N. Security Council Security requested the Government of Sudan to cease its campaign of ethnic cleansing by militias and move its own troops into West Sudan, the killing continues. Both monitors of the African Union and the United Nations report no significant improvement. The Sudanese Government's failure to act is not a surprise. The reaction of the Security Council has been timid and the record with Zimbabwe suggests that Khartoum has little to worry about. A pledge to set up safe areas for the more than 1 million displaced people in Darfur, protected by its security forces, was used to draft members of the Janjaweed militias into those very forces according to reports by human rights groups. The Khartoum strategy is to give the impression of movement while allowing its campaign against the people of Darfur to continue.
The debacle at the United Nations leading up to the US led invasion of Iraq and its aftermath, focused attention on the role of the UN and its legitimacy. The situation in Darfur confirms that little has changed in the decade since the UN reduced its peacekeeping force to a skeletal operation at the start of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Five countries continue to effectively control the Security Council and it appears that unless there's an American angle to an international issue, the rest of the world just shrugs its collective shoulders. Politicians seldom pay a price for inaction in response to situations such as the Balkans in the early 1990's, Rwanda and now Darfur. The Arab world remains mum and there is no chance of street demonstrations across Europe even remotely comparable with those against the Iraq War. The issue of why the international media ignored the developing crisis in Darfur, until the Sudanese Government's campaign had met its objectives, also merits attention because of the correlation between media attention and response from politicians.
Media coverage of conflict in difficult areas of Africa and Asia usually depends on brave freelance journalists getting an outlet for their work on Western broadcast media. Jon Snow on Channel 4 and the BBC in particular provide a platform for such material. However, getting the attention of news editors in general is not easy. According to Steve Crawshaw, London director of Human Rights Watch and a former foreign news editor at the London Independent, it was only when an internal UN report on Darfur was suppressed last April, that the media began paying attention. Writing in the Financial Times magazine, Crawshaw says: 'When it comes to mass killing of civilians, a curious Catch-22 comes into play. If editors do not see the story on TV, they do not believe it's news; if programme makers do not read it in the newspapers, they do not believe it's news. And if politicians and officials don't see or read it except in reports thudding on to their desks from human rights and humanitarian NGOs, then that doesn't count either.' Meanwhile, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr with a relatively small group takes over his religion's principal shrine to presumably further his political goals and he gets daily media attention around the globe. Editorial writers often highlight the need to respond swiftly to avert what can become a humanitarian disaster. Ten years after the Rwanda genocide, nothing much has changed and the safest option for politicians is to offer little more than platitudes. -Michael Hennigan Our Comment feature has been incorporated in the:
The
Finfacts Ireland News & Comment Service
from October 2004
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