Darfur Genocide

Last night on on NOW with Bill Moyers, David Brancaccio had a very in-depth, heart-breaking and enraging discussion with journalist Julie Flint regarding the horrific situation unfolding in the Sudan. The transcript of the interview doesn't seem to be posted online just yet, but there is a link to a page on the Human Rights Watch site that has Flint's video available for download.

Basically, there has been a chillingly successful campaign of government sponsored and enacted ethnic cleansing in the Sudan, with devastating ramifications still to come. Hundreds of thousands of refugees, displaced from their villages (Flint described a region totally absent of humanity; emptiness and silence; food stocks looted and burned, wells destroyed) are now facing starvation. And little is being done.

Watch the video. It should anger you into action of some sort or another.

As an aside, in a statement I thought indicative of the entire problem with the American media, Brancaccio asked flint about all the journalists, situated along the Sudan-Chad border, unable to get inside and report on the reality of the situation. Flint rolled her eyes and said something to the effect of, "Hmmph. I walked across a valley and was inside. It's dangerous, but incredibly easy to get inside." And if that doesn't spell it out, I'm not sure what would.

**Update**

Turns out I don't transcribe well from memory. PBS has posted the transcript of the interview. Well worth a read. In any case, the excange about walking across the valley follows. And though I misrememebred the words, I still think I conveyed the meaning.

FLINT: Yes, I mean, I've been writing about Darfur since August 2002. It was there. It was happening. It was possible to do.

It wasn't reported on. So, the relative silence of the press and the emphasis of the international community on let's have a foreign policy success in southern Sudan conspired to cast a blanket of silence over Darfur. And of course, there's also coming back to the fact that it's very hard to get in there. The government simply doesn't let you view what's happening. So, you have to be quite inventive.

BRANCACCIO: Well, I know some other very intrepid reporters who've tried. And there they are arrayed along the Chad border with the Sudan. They can't get in. You did?

FLINT: You walk across a valley. It's easy. Sorry, it's really easy. I'd like to tell you I'm a heroine. It's not. It's easy.

BRANCACCIO: And so many lives are at stake that these are perhaps risk the media should take?

FLINT: Definitely yes, definitely, the attention is welcome now. But it's late.