A conspiracy of silence on Darfur in Beirut

By Julie Flint, The Daily Star

July 23, 2004 — It was a fine idea – to issue Amnesty International’s latest report on Darfur, “Rape as a Weapon of War,” not in London but in the Middle East and Africa. In Africa, because Sudan is part of Africa; in the Middle East, in Amnesty’s own words, “because northern Sudan is part of the Arab-Islamic world, and the government and government-supported militias which are committing horrific human rights violations in Darfur have benefited from the support or silence of Middle Eastern countries.”

If there was any doubt about that support or silence, it was dispelled at the issue of the report at the Press Syndicate building in Beirut this week. The opportunity to engage in a debate about the monstrous goings-on in Darfur was lost as Khartoum’s ambassador in Lebanon was allowed to hijack the presentation of the report and turn it into a platform for Sudan’s lies and propaganda.

Ethnic cleansing by government forces in Darfur? An invention of the people who brought you Abu Ghraib and who lied about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction! (Loud applause.) A conspiracy against the Arabs! (Louder applause.) Rape? What nonsense! Not more than two cases, the ambassador declared – apparently unaware that, under the relentless accumulation of facts, his own government had been compelled to set up committees to investigate accusations of rape in Darfur and help victims through criminal cases.

I recognized few of the faces from the media at the news conference. Where were the grandees of Lebanese journalism, the editorial writers who are respected not only in their own country, but also across the Arab world? Here was a report – researched mainly by Arabs – about a human rights catastrophe that has left 1.5 million Sudanese Muslims homeless and that may kill 300,000 people by year’s end. A catastrophe, it has been said, that will probably go down as one of the greatest crimes of our lifetimes. Rwanda in slow motion.

Where were they all? And who was responsible for throwing neutrality in the dustbin by permitting the Sudanese ambassador to speak to his heart’s content (and beyond) from a preferential seat on the podium, from where he questioned the integrity of Amnesty International, heaped scorn on human rights concerns and brazenly asserted that he would offer a visa to Sudan – but only to an “Arab” researcher “under my supervision.” (Ecstatic applause.)

After the ambassador, it was the turn of a gaggle of well-upholstered ladies in the front row of the audience, all past the age of traveling to war zones and who apparently represented Lebanese non-governmental organizations, or NGOs. Forget the “N,” these were GO ladies. They clapped, they cheered, they smiled. They just loved the ambassador. What they didn’t do was ask questions or show any interest in what was happening in Darfur. They knew, you see: It’s an American plot, a pure invention by the occupiers of Iraq.

But where was America in all this? The report was Amnesty International’s and Abu Ghraib is a continent away from Darfur.

There’s rape in every society, one GO lady declared. But not on this scale, madam, and not by men wearing the uniforms of their country. Trust me, I’ve been there; you haven’t. Why, she asked, was Amnesty International interested only in Sudan? It’s not, of course: The report is part of a wide-ranging Amnesty campaign called “Stop Violence Against Women.” But these women neither knew nor cared. This was “Arabism” at is most ignorant, its most ugly, its most cruel; blind, uncaring and bigoted.

There were no questions for the representative from Amnesty. Not one. No debate. Just grandstanding and tub-thumping. A few young journalists tried to protest this travesty of a gathering but made no headway. The “press conference” was declared over.

What happened in Beirut this week was a microcosm of what has happened – or, more correctly, has not happened – in the Arab world since the war in Darfur escalated early last year, as non-Arab tribes took up arms against government-supported militias and the government responded by cracking down, bloodily, on civilians. Until very recently, only a few Arab voices, most of them in the beleaguered human rights community, have warned against the crimes against humanity being perpetrated in Darfur by the Sudanese government and its proxy Janjaweed militiaman. But these scattered voices have had little influence in a region where the media is still tightly controlled; where many of the most independent-minded intellectuals are silenced by the political police and, increasingly, by radical Islamists; and where most ordinary citizens are blinkered by poverty, prejudice and injustice.

It is not that the Arab regimes do not know the truth – or some of the truth – of what is happening in Darfur. Earlier this year, the Arab League issued a statement, the first of its kind in its 59-year history, acknowledging “gross human rights violations” committed in a member state – Sudan. (The statement was quietly forgotten under pressure from Khartoum.) In May, amid considerable international pressure, the Arab League sent a fact-finding mission to Darfur. Reliable sources in Cairo say the report prepared by the mission was very critical, but because of “strong opposition” from the government of Sudan it was not made public.

The Arab silence on Darfur is reminiscent of the silence that followed the gassing of thousands of Iraqi Kurds by the former regime of Saddam Hussein. Arab states have turned their eyes away while an Arab government working with Arab proxy forces has created what relief officials call the greatest humanitarian disaster in the world today. Their silence is all the more shocking because the victims of this disaster, although not of the same ethnic origin as their oppressors, are, like them, of the Muslim faith.

In northwestern Afghanistan last month, the Taleban killed five aid workers from the international relief organization Medecins Sans Frontieres, because, it said, they “were working for the policy of America.” In Beirut this week, the Sudanese ambassador used virtually the same logic to dismiss Amnesty International’s report, supported by the applause of some and the silence of others in the audience. It was false. It was dangerous. And, to those of us who have seen the human tragedy that is Darfur, it was terribly, terribly depressing.

Julie Flint researched and co-authored Human Rights Watch’s most recent report on Darfur, “Darfur Destroyed.” She wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR