By A. M. Rosenthal
April 23, 1999
The train pulls in and the refugees are herded out. Then they are sold to waiting merchants, into slavery. Slavery, not forced labor or some such euphemism. Slavery, do you hear -- branded, flogged, raped, tortured into renouncing their religion, and then put to work for their owners. They were captured and sold in Sudan by government soldiers and militias. Relatives who escaped capture starve; the regime will not allow food to reach them.
A friend asks why, after writing often about human rights, I oppose the war against Serbia, ruled by a dictator. I do not put dictators into two groups -- one to oppose, the other to strengthen because they are customers. The one word for Slobodan Milosevic and all dictators, whatever their religion or country, is: killer.
I oppose the war because it has been mismanaged, misplanned, politically, diplomatically and strategically slovenly and amateurish -- adding up to disaster for the victims. This air war allowed Mr. Milosevic to drive Albanians out of Kosovo. It gave him information that should have been top secret -- that the U.S. would not send in ground forces. The only way it has helped human rights is to make more disgusting the icy Western attitude to other huge human rights crimes, as the massacres and slave trains in Sudan. They could have been stopped without war. Now two roads are open to recoup what our leaders lost in Kosovo.
We can send in hundreds of thousands of troops -- without illusion. The dictator will exact as many NATO lives as he can and his goal will be to spread the war throughout the Balkans, and beyond. Or we can negotiate out. But then we must use the years afterward to strengthen the Serbian democratic-minded opposition against the dictator, with a smidgen of the financial investment of the Kosovo war, and little of Serbian and Kosovar blood. And without forgetting Yugoslavia, the West could remember that in Asia and Africa are human rights violations amounting to genocide. Even in peace, the West now struggles for human rights only where its trade interests are not risked.
China's President was pleasant in Beijing to America's President about easing the pain of Tibet, 50 years a captive nation. He lied to a man who longed to be lied to. As crackdowns in Tibet and China increase, and knowledge of Beijing's nuclear-weapon espionage is uncovered, Washington campaigns to give China the economic benefits of the World Trade Organization. Unsaid is that Beijing's membership would formally wipe out any effort to use the only human rights tools we have in China. Those tools are linking trade with easing persecution and warning allies we will exact economic reprisal if they then double-cross us by sopping up our China trade. We would rank people as important as bananas.
We ignore Sudan. Why? Oh, come on. For 16 years, the ruling Arabs of the north have been at war against southern Sudanese, mostly Christian or animists, and all, you know, black. We could help the victims by positioning monitoring stations in the territory they still control, sending food directly to them, overflying the government blockade, by treating Khartoum as an enemy economically, and its prey as an ally.
American moral honor is upheld by some among us -- the students working on the Campaign of Conscience for Sudan, the Center for Religious Freedom of Freedom House, and a few legislators. This capsule comes from Senator Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican: More southern Sudanese have died from guns, bombs and starvation than all the victims in Bosnia, Kosovo and Rwanda combined -- at least 1.9 million. About 2.6 million face starvation because of genocidal withholding of food, and 4.3 million were driven from their homes -- the largest displaced population in the world.
Elie Wiesel, supportive of NATO in Kosovo, asked President Clinton publicly why we had not been involved in Rwanda. Mr. Clinton said he would do his best to make sure there was not another Rwanda. Sudan had slipped his mind. So has his overdue obligation to appoint Presidential members of the commission against religious persecution, passed by Congress. Slaves. The number in Sudan can roughly be estimated -- tens of thousands. Only owners take precise slave-counts.
