Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review April 24, 2001 / 2 Iyar, 5761

Nat Hentoff

Hentoff
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports


Congress discovers slavery


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- DICK ARMEY, the House majority leader, and Charles Rangel, the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, are two of the most visible and powerful members of Congress. They differ strongly on most issues. But on March 22, both led a press conference on slavery, ethnic cleansing and other pervasive violations of the human rights of black Christians and animists in southern Sudan.

Dick Armey stated: "Sudan today is a horror without parallel. It is the only place in the world in which religious genocide is taking place. People are being tortured, mutilated and killed solely because of their Christian faith. It is a place where two million people have been slaughtered -- more than in Bosnia, Rwanda and Somalia combined.

Said Charles Rangel, "In the Sudan, the world is faced with a human-rights nightmare of the first order. We have the opportunity, indeed the responsibility, to use our international leadership to help end the civil war and the heartbreaking enslavement of women and children, which has intensified as a result of the hostilities."

One would think there would have been considerable press coverage of such passionate denunciations of the Islamic government in northern Sudan -- the source of these horrors. But there was only slight attention in the media, although many other statements by Armey and Rangel are reported regularly.

On March 7, at an International Relations Committee hearing in Congress, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., asked Secretary of State Colin Powell about slavery, the bombing of schools and hospitals, and other atrocities in Sudan.

Powell responded, "I do know there is no greater tragedy on the face of the Earth than the one unfolding in Sudan."

One would think that so anguished a statement by the much-respected Colin Powell would be significant news; but have you seen any commentary on it -- or any serious mention at all -- in newspapers, or on television or radio?

On April 3 -- at a session of the Joint Subcommittee on International Operations, Human Rights and Africa -- Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., spoke of the government of Sudan's forced removal of black Christians and animists in the South from rich oil fields; the investments of foreign companies in the oil fields; and the way the National Islamic Front uses the proceeds from the investments to intensify its terrorism against civilians on these lands.

"Clear evidence now exists," said Rep. McKinney, "of massive forced displacement; aerial bombardments; low-level strafing of villages, hospitals, schools and churches from helicopter gunships armed with heavy machine guns; and thousands of individual acts of murder, torture and rape. The violence against women has been particularly brutal and includes allegations that women have been raped and their infants nailed to trees with spikes." Have you seen news stories on her testimony?

I have heard from Charles Jacobs, head of the American Anti-Slavery Group, who recently went to Sudan on a fact-finding trip. He was told by the interviewer of a rescued black woman whose baby's throat was slit by an Arab raider. The raider then cut the toddler's head off. The mother, after being raped, was forced to carry the head of her child on the march north, and eventually was ordered to throw the child's head into a fire.

That story is not surprising in view of the testimony of the many rescued black slaves who have endured gang rape and other forms of brutality. What are the reactions of American feminist leaders to what is happening to women in Sudan?

Again, where is the American press's coverage of Rep. Cynthia McKinney's factually precise testimony? Where are Ted Koppel, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw? Except for a few limited media reports, the terrifying facts on the Sudanese ground have not been told to Americans.

When she was secretary of state, Madeleine Albright said that the atrocities in Sudan are "not marketable to the American people." But how can the American people know about this holocaust unless the press reports on it regularly and in horrifying detail? Perhaps now the Rev. Al Sharpton's first-person accounts of slavery in Sudan will awaken the media.



JWR contributor Nat Hentoff is a First Amendment authority and author of numerous books. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

Up

04/17/01: '60 Minutes' should be ashamed of itself
04/10/01: A case for public executions
04/03/01: At colleges, a fear of free speech
03/27/01: Constitution bars school vouchers
03/20/01: Torturers as trading partners
03/13/01: Supreme Court rewrites Constitution
03/06/01: Testing compassionate conservatism
02/27/01: Are certain lives not worth living?
02/20/01: Misteaching the rule of law
02/13/01: What a web!
02/06/01: All that jazz
01/30/01: History will also judge Robert Ray
01/23/01: History will not absolve him
01/08/01: Will Rice remember Rwanda?
01/02/01: Expanding the culture of death
12/26/00: Media should stop misleading public about High Court's actions
12/18/00: A government that executes children
12/11/00: Caucus speaks out on slavery in Sudan
12/04/00: This year, give the gift of the Constitution
11/27/00: Is capital punishment a deterrent?
11/20/00: Punishing the Boy Scouts
11/06/00: Joe Lieberman's excommunication
10/30/00: CNN discards journalistic responsibility
10/23/00: The basic flaw in the debates
10/16/00: Nader's American history lesson; or: Silencing Jesse Jackson
10/06/00: Hate-crime laws: The real message
10/03/00: Why Clinton was not convicted
09/25/00: Protecting babies born alive
09/25/00: A selective zeal for justice
09/06/00: The power of nonviolence
08/28/00: Should Dr. Laura be silenced?
08/22/00: Trashing the Bill of Rights in Philly
08/14/00: The repressive hand of China
08/07/00: A racial incident on a train
07/31/00: Attention Jesse Jackson: Sudanese children are still branded and enslaved
07/24/00: Open up the presidential debates!
07/17/00: A stealth attack on privacy
07/03/00: Plea to the Congressional Black Caucus
06/26/00: Burning 'bad' ideas at college
06/19/00: Affirmative action beyond race
06/12/00: Students discover the Constitution
06/06/00: The Liar's legacy and America's delusions
05/30/00: Reining in the majority's will
05/23/00: Press swoons for a bunco artist
05/15/00: The China that tourists don't see
05/08/00: The coverage of Reno's lawless raid
05/01/00: In Clinton and Castro's best interests
04/24/00: Elian's human rights
04/17/00: Crime's down, but arrests keep rising
04/10/00: Teacher brings Constitution to life
04/03/00: The Americans who keep disappearing
03/27/00: The censoring of feminist history
03/20/00: Should there be a chaplain in Congress?
03/13/00: Big labor, big China, spinning Gore
03/03/00: The ACLU violates its principles --- yet again!
02/28/00: Still two nations?
02/11/00: You bet we should disbar Bubba
01/31/00: Where was Jesse?
01/24/00: Is suing church for sexual harassment an entanglement?
01/18/00: Will Miranda make it?
01/11/00: ACLU: Guilty until presumed innocent?
01/03/00: Liberty lion should be Man of Century
12/28/99: Drug tests that tear families apart
12/20/99: Get ready for decisive ruling on school vouchers for religious schools
12/13/99: Guess who is taking the lead in anti-slavery movement? Hint: It ain't Rev. Jesse
12/06/99: When we refuse to buy the 'otherly-challenged' excuse
11/29/99: Expelling 'Huck Finn'
11/22/99: Pleading the First
11/16/99: Goal of diversity needs rethinking?
11/08/99: Prosecution in darkness
11/02/99: The accuracy that's owed to readers
10/26/99: Disappeared Americans
10/18/99: The blue wall of silence
10/11/99: Bill Bradley's speech tax
10/04/99: 'Technicalities' that keep us free
09/27/99: Our 'Americanism'-ignorant generation
09/20/99: ACLU better clean up its act
09/13/99: A professor of infanticide at Princeton
09/07/99: The Big Apple's Rotten Policing
08/23/99: Lawyerly ethics
08/16/99: To Get a Supreme Court Seat
08/02/99: What are the poor people doing tonight?
07/26/99: Lady Hillary and the press

© 2000, NEA