The Arab media are indifferent to ethnic cleansing in Sudan because Israel and the United States are not seen as the aggressors, says the former editor of a leading Arabic-language daily.
"Is the life of 1,000 people in western Sudan less valuable, or is a single killed Palestinian or Iraqi of greater importance, merely because the enemy is Israeli or American?" asked Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed in a commentary published in his former paper, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat of London.
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According to estimates by U.N. delegations in the Darfur region of Sudan, 300,000 Sudanese are in danger of liquidation by Arab militia allied with Khartoum's Islamist regime, notes the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI, which provided a translation of the commentary.
"They are not the victims of Israeli or American aggression; therefore, they are not an issue for concern," Al-Rashed wrote, characterizing the general view of Middle East media.
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He points out the U.N. legal department has called it a massacre, which means it probably will be treated like the situation in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
"It is a grave matter that government-sponsored forces or militias should be allowed to carry out the annihilation of people in order to achieve quick or decisive victory," said Al-Rashed.
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The U.N., therefore, he said, will take action, "depriving the state of its internal sovereignty" and viewing the matter as international.
The Sudanese government is in danger of being accused of genocide, Al-Rashed said, which will lead to international trials, forcing the country's leaders to "meet the same end" as Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.
It was inconceivable to Milosevic that he would be brought to trial, Al-Rashed said, but now "he rots in a prison cell, like any other prisoner, wishing history could turn back so he could rectify his deeds."
The fall of Belgrade, the former editor said, marked an "important turning point in the way international bodies understand the meaning of national rights and the inviolability of sovereign states."
Al-Rashed said he favors the unity of Sudan, where the mostly Christian and animist south is resisting the Arab north's attempt to Islamize the nation.
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"However, this should not go together with the massacre of thousands of people, or throwing them out of their villages and letting state-sponsored militias protect their rights as they see fit," he said. "No! This measure will in fact ultimately lead to the state being accountable for the end result."
He concludes: "As for Arab intellectuals who see nothing in the world but the Palestinian and the Iraqi causes, and who consider any blood not spilled in conflicts with foreigners to be cheap and its spilling justifiable – they are intellectual accomplices in the crime."
Related story:
World ignoring genocide in Sudan
