Crisis in Sudan

NOVEMBER 15, 2000

Press Briefing Event at Opening of U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Special Exhibit Entitled "Genocide Warning: Sudan"

by Jeff Drumtra
U.S. Committee for Refugees

Human Garbage: How American Media Views Events in Sudan

Thank you to the few journalists who are here this afternoon at this press briefing for the unveiling of this new exhibit by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, entitled "Genocide Warning: Sudan."

I commend the Holocaust Museum for this important new exhibit, and I commend you few journalists for attending this briefing. I would like to say a few words to you and to your editors.

This new exhibit is sorely needed. Americans know virtually nothing about Sudan. The American media ensure they know nothing. The American media do not inform them. As someone who has practiced journalism myself, I think it is fair to charge the American media with professional negligence on the matter of Sudan — professional journalistic irresponsibility.

You are journalists. You know the code of journalism. Journalists cover events that are extraordinary. Events that are unprecedented. Events that set records. Sudan is full of records — awful, grisly records. Sudan is full of headlines — grim headlines. Yet American journalism largely ignores Sudan. In what way is Sudan not worthy of coverage?

Here is a headline: 2 million Sudanese people have died of war-related causes in the past 17 years. That's more deaths than in Kosovo, Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechnya, Indonesia, and Sierra Leone combined. That's more war-related deaths than our own country has suffered during its entire history. That's not news? During Sudan's war, an estimated average of 300 people have died each day, day after day, for 17 years. That's not a story that merits coverage?

Here's another headline: More Sudanese have fled their homes than in any other country on earth. Nearly 4.5 million Sudanese people are uprooted from their homes. They live as refugees in neighboring countries, or as internally displaced people inside Sudan. That record is not a headline? One of every nine people uprooted in this world are from Sudan. That's not a news story?

Here's another headline: The war in Sudan is currently the longest uninterrupted civil war in the world. It has been going on for 17 years without stop. That's not worthy of journalistic coverage?

Here's another headline: At least 115 times this year, civilian and humanitarian targets in southern Sudan have been bombed by Sudanese government planes. At least 115 times this year, Sudanese government planes have deliberately dropped bombs on towns, villages, hospitals, schools, health clinics, displacement camps, and relief food distributions in Sudan — locations with absolutely no military significance. That's not worthy of journalistic coverage? This year Sudanese government planes have bombed UN relief aircraft on the ground. That's not a headline?

The highest standards of journalism involve reporting on the human condition. Journalism is all about explaining what is going on in our world. Even superficial, voyeuristic journalism makes a point of reporting on events in our life that are out of the ordinary. What is happening in Sudan, week after week, is out of the ordinary. It is extraordinary. By any journalistic measurement, Sudan is a story that journalists should cover. The consistent failure to report on this story raises fundamental questions about the integrity of American journalism. I question the professional ethics of news editors who have turned their back for years on the story of Sudan.

I am thankful that the Holocaust Museum, and its Committee on Conscience, have organized this press briefing. This new exhibit, unveiled today, constitutes a new phase in the life of the Holocaust Museum and its mandate. I am told this is the first time that the Holocaust Museum has devoted an exhibit to current events in a single country. The moral power of the Holocaust Museum speaks for itself. The fact that the Holocaust Museum and its Committee on Conscience have chosen to enter this new phase in their own history, by focusing on what they call the "threat of genocide" in Sudan, speaks volumes about the gravity of what is occurring there.

Tens of thousands of people who visit the Holocaust Museum will see this exhibit. It will be their first education about Sudan. Many will be shocked to learn that there is a place in our world today with such pervasive death, with such massive uprooting of people, with slavery, with religious persecution, with deliberate aerial bombings of civilian and humanitarian targets. They will be shocked because you, the media, have not told them this is happening. You, the media, have ignored the human deaths in Sudan as if the people there are human garbage.

I commend the Holocaust Museum for expanding the scope of its work and opening this exhibit. I hope that someday soon the journalism profession will begin to do its own work properly, and will begin to report regularly on what is arguably the most tragic human story in the world today — Sudan and its people.