Granted, it’s hardly surprising that news organizations would rather spend hours manufacturing suspense over the mysterious disappearance of a passenger airline in Asia than spend a minute covering the latest atrocity unfolding in Africa. After all, even the antics of B-list celebrities trump African atrocities when it comes to the two R’s that guide all media today: ratings and readership.
Therefore, I’m all too mindful that any reporter sounding the alarm about Christian crusaders ethnically cleansing Muslims from Central African Republic (CAR) today is akin to John the Baptist preaching about the coming of Jesus Christ in the wilderness during Bible days. But I heard the alarm. I always do.
In fact, I responded to a similar alarm 10 years ago by joining the fatefully silent chorus of those not only condemning Muslim jihadists for ethnically cleansing Christians from Sudan but also pleading for Western governments to use their political influence and military might to stop them.
What follows is an excerpt from “Help! Ethnic Cleansing and Forced Starvation Persist in Africa,” December 1, 2005. It pertains to that crisis as it unfolded back then, but can also pertain to the one unfolding in CAR today. Indeed, it might be helpful for you to read it as such:
More than a year ago, then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that the systematic raping, pillaging, and killing of Black Africans in Sudan’s Darfur region constitute genocide… I described these genocidal acts as ethnic cleansing because they were (and are) being perpetrated by Arab militiamen known as the Janjaweed (bandits)…
Notwithstanding mounting death tolls … European and American leaders have done little more than express moral indignation and allocate guilt-assuaging funds to deal with the problem. Never mind that it’s been abundantly clear for years that these funds have had virtually no salutary impact on the genocidal plight of Black Africans in this region of Africa.
Unfortunately, news coverage of the Natalee Holloway saga over the summer and hurricanes throughout the fall has trumped media reporting on the situation in Darfur. This, despite the fact that experienced aid workers now say what’s going on there is the worst humanitarian crisis in history. And, given my previous articles on the humanitarian crises in Niger and the DR Congo, this is a truly alarming assessment.
Alas, I can only reiterate my plea to the readers of this weblog to do whatever is possible to challenge world leaders (including Obasanjo of Nigeria and Mbeki of South Africa) to organize an international coalition of the willing to intervene to stop this ethnic cleansing in Africa – just as the international community intervened to stop similar atrocities in Europe [Bosnia) only years ago.
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For the record, though, here’s all you need to know about the current crisis from a February 12 New York Times report:
Tens of thousands of Muslims are being forced by Christian militias to flee the Central African Republic in what human rights groups and a top United Nations official characterized on Wednesday as de facto ethnic cleansing.
The violent exodus is highlighting the powerlessness of both a 1,600-member French peacekeeping force and the country’s shaky authorities to halt spiraling religious and ethnic violence, human rights groups say…
The anti-balaka Christian militias — balaka means machete in the local Sango language — have turned into a violent, undisciplined gang apparently focused on revenge attacks against Muslim civilians over the brutal rule of the Seleka. Hundreds on both sides have been killed since December.
Of course, I condemn this ethnic cleansing by anti-balaka Christians against Muslims with the same indignation and despair with which I condemned the ethnic cleansing by Janjaweed Muslims against Christians. What’s more, I’m acutely mindful that, just as it is with most conflicts on the continent, the fighting in CAR is also motivated by quest for raw political power and control of rich natural resources.
But I see no point in commenting any further. Well, except to concede that, instead of international law, perhaps the only law that can truly govern religious/ethnic conflicts among the descendants of Abraham (not just in Africa but in the Middle East too) is the old biblical law of lex talianos: an eye for an eye, etc. God bless and help them all.
NOTE: Apropos of the media’s obsessive and mercenary focus on the search for MH Flight 370, we’re now being treated to hyperventilating reports on yet another satellite image of floating debris – this time in the Indian Ocean off the southwest coast of Australia. Except that it occurs to me that such images are far more likely to be of floating debris from the March 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami than of this doomed Malaysian airliner. Nonetheless, the media will continue reacting to every sighting as if they’re participating in the biggest and most exciting Easter egg hunt in history.
We’re committed to providing up-to-the-minute information on this story, er, even when there’s no up-to-the-minute information.
(BBC, March 20, 2014)
Enough said?
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