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Points of View
Revisiting Man's Inhumanity to ManLatest bloodbath is being waged by African tribes.The images never change. They are the young, trembling with fear and hunger, whose photographs become the photo essays in Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. They are the victims of radical militias, made up of bullies and thugs, in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe.A half century ago, they were the Ibos in Nigeria, the rebels in Katanga. In the 1960s and '70s, they were the thousands who fled Idi Amin in Uganda. They were survivors who endured the massacre of 800,000 of their kinsmen in Rwanda in the summer of 1994 what the Clinton Administration labeled "acts of genocide." They were the Anya Nya, Nilotic Christians in the Bahr al-Ghrazal who dreamed of independence and against whom Sudan's Islamic government in Khartoum used poisonous gases.Two million non-Arabs lost their lives in the Sudanese civil war between 1969 and 1989. Reports of the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International suggest the toll may go higher in the western quarter of Sudan known as Darfur.This latest bloodbath is being waged by African tribes accepted as Muslim Arabs by the central authority in Khartoum. The organizer of the Janjawid is Sheik Musa Hillal. Once jailed for murdering Muslim blacks, he is responsible for burning villages, gang rapes, torture, burning captives alive and the proliferation of mass graves across western Sudan.Small wonder then that the Janjawid openly declare they intend to exterminate black males, enslave their women and seize their land.It is the Zagha, Massaleit and Fur tribes suffering today, 200,000 of whom have fled to Chad. A quarter of Darfur's four million people have become internal refugees, their towns ravaged by cholera, dysentery, hepatitis E, and malaria. At least 30,000 have died for want of food, medicine and housing. This lack has left communities such as Kailek to reckon every day with the deaths of eight to nine children 5 years of age and younger.U.N. observers see a need for 40,000 tons of relief supplies each month. The African Union would like to see their "monitor forces" increased to 5,000 from fewer than 500 in a region where 60% of the population has witnessed the murder of a family member. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Anan project the number of dead could reach one million by year-end.The U.S. State Department in August concluded that the Janjawid militia have engaged in a "pattern of atrocities" that fits the definition of genocide. Despite Powell and Anan's projection of the number of dead by year-end, France, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, China, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates offer no support for Security Council sanctions or divestment programs directed at Africa's largest nation.It is always difficult to deal with such issues, to confront images of mass murder, whether it be a mosque in Bosnia, a school house in Beslan or a bus station in Beer Sheva. The natural inclination is to recoil or look away, for is we acknowledge evil, we accept some responsibility for our inaction.At 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 21, Professor Eric Reeves of Smith College will speak on "The Reign of Terror in Darfur" in the Ohio Room of Kilcawley Center at Youngstown State University. He has written and testified extensively on Sudan. His appearance, open to the public, is sponsored by YSU's department of history, Africana studies, and Judaic and Holocaust studies as well as the William and Hilda Clayman Endowment and the Schermer Trust. The least we can do is become better informed."