Media and Anti-War Movement: Iraq invites rage - Darfur indifference

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press Saturday October 01, 2005 23:23 by Michael Hennigan - Finfacts

As the bloodshed in Iraq continues to get a lot of media attention because of America's involvement, in a striking contrast, the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Darfur, West Sudan, where an estimated 180,000 people have died in a campaign of genocide, merits wide indifference. It's not that there's nothing to report.

Baba Gana Kingibe, the African Union's special representative to Sudan, said today that on Wednesday (September 28th), about 400 Arab Janjaweed fighters on camels and horseback attacked the Aro Sharow refugee camp in western Darfur, killing 34 people as government helicopters flew overhead. Government forces have ``resorted to the violent, destructive and overwhelming use of force not only against rebel forces, but also on innocent civilian villages and the IDP camps,'' Kingibe told reporters today in Khartoum, Sudan's capital.

On Friday, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in a statement on the "murderous assault," said that the "UNHCR, which carries out protection monitoring in West Darfur, has three offices in the region, with five more planned. There are an estimated 2 million internally displaced people in Darfur, including 715,700 in West Darfur; 770,800 in South Darfur, and 480,000 in North Darfur."

In the Middle East, there is no rage in the "Arab Street" in response to this tragedy and in the rest of the world, it is also largely one of indifference