Darfur: US Bush’s Olympic Mistake
By Eric Reeves, The New Republic
September 14, 2007 — AN international outcry over Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Olympic Games
has grown steadily louder in recent months. How, it is being asked, can
the premier event in international sports be hosted by a nation
complicit in the most heinous international crimes? The Chinese regime
is guilty of perpetrating the ongoing destruction of Tibet, supporting
the vicious Myanmar junta, engaging in gross domestic human rights
abuses, and, perhaps worst of all, facilitating genocide in Darfur.
Despite the controversy, President Bush announced last week that he will
attend the Games. It’s an unprecedented move–apparently no American
president has ever attended an Olympic Games held abroad–and China’s
human rights violations make Bush’s decision seem all the more
unwarranted. But perhaps he’ll be able to shield himself from criticism
next summer by sharing a view of the Games with Steven Spielberg, who
agreed in March to serve as an artistic consultant for the opening and
closing ceremonies.
This is distressing because China has proven adept at generating
political cover for its misdeeds. It recently received some excessively
generous praise for not opposing U.N. Security Council Resolution 1769,
passed on July 31, which authorizes a force of some 26,000 civilian
police and troops to protect civilians and humanitarians in Darfur. But
China was instrumental in badly weakening the resolution, leaving it
without a mandate to disarm combatants, even those carrying weapons
introduced into Darfur in violation of previous Security Council
resolutions. As both Amnesty International and the U.N. Panel of Experts
on Darfur have amply demonstrated, Khartoum continues to violate the
weapons embargo on a massive scale. Further, China was also the key
player in removing any threat of sanctions against Khartoum for
obstructing deployment of the U.N.-authorized force.
China also drew praise for appointing a “special envoy” for Darfur. But
Liu Guijin’s first carefully orchestrated tour of the region in May was
the occasion only for airbrushing its genocidal realities in subsequent
public statements. “I didn’t see a desperate scenario of people dying of
hunger,” Liu said at a media briefing. Rather, he said, people in Darfur
thanked him for the Chinese government’s help in building dams and
providing water supply equipment. Beijing has yet to condemn Khartoum
for its crimes, or call for a halt to the ongoing aerial bombardment of
civilian targets, or offer public criticism of any of the regime’s
actions, including repeated obstruction and harassment of the world’s
largest humanitarian operation. By refusing to speak truthfully about
Darfur, Beijing has convinced these brutal génocidaires that there will
be no real international pressure on them to stop.
Now, Bush and Spielberg are contributing further to the whitewashing of
China’s record of abuse. Sophie Richardson, an Asia expert at Human
Rights Watch, said that by attending the Olympics in Beijing Bush was
giving “an enormous propaganda opportunity to an abusive government.”
Spielberg has declared publicly that, “all of us are dedicated to making
these Olympic opening and closing ceremonies the most emotional anyone
has ever seen.” But what “emotions” does the director of “Schindler’s
List” associate with genocide in Darfur? When the brutal Janjaweed
militias throw African children, screaming in terror, into bonfires as
their parents watch, what emotions are evoked for Spielberg? When young
girls are brutally gang-raped, what thoughts spring to mind? When
malnutrition claims the lives of more and more Darfuri victims, what
feelings should attend the spectacle of agony that is starvation? It’s
inconceivable that such negative images will be included in Spielberg’s
show.
THE BUSH administration has much to answer for on Darfur–its failed policies and even larger failure of nerve and will. Andrew Natsios, the
president’s (incongruously half-time) special envoy for Sudan, has been
the most outspoken in attempting to walk back the administration’s
characterization of Darfur as the site of genocide. For all the tough
talk about “NATO stewardship” for a mission in Darfur, Bush and his
Defense Department have failed to make any significant commitment of the
resources necessary for the current peace support operation there
(particularly transport, logistics, aircraft, and intelligence-gathering
capacity). And, most shamefully, the administration continues to mout
concern for Darfur even while it cuts expedient deals with Khartoum for
supposed “terrorist intelligence.”
Despite such feckless behavior by the United States, it remains the case
that China possesses unique leverage with Khartoum–leverage that might
move the regime from its present obdurate defiance of the international
community. But unless Beijing feels a great deal more pressure than it
currently does, the status quo in Darfur will be preserved, as
Khartoum’s thugs confidently buy more time to allow a grim genocide by
attrition to complete itself.
What can change Beijing’s currently enabling attitudes is a real threat
that “their” Olympics will be redefined, made the occasion of an
unprecedented shaming campaign. Much more potent than a simple
boycott–which does more to punish athletes and the entire international
sports community–such a campaign, broadly supported, will create
precisely the powerful forum for outrage that Beijing works so hard to
suppress domestically. But this is unlikely to occur so long as key
international actors like President Bush, and high-profile international
figures like Steven Spielberg, pretend that the 2008 Games occur in a
moral and political vacuum. And yet if Darfur’s agony continues, these
Games will inevitably be remembered as the “Genocide Olympics.”
* Eric Reeves is author of A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide. He can be reached at [email protected]., website : www.sudanreeves.org