Press Release/Commentary by EMBSD posted on December 30, 2004 at 16:05:39: EST (-5 GMT)
THE WASHINGTON POST AND ITS MISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN AGAINST SUDAN
(Embassy Of Sudan, Washington, D.C., 12:30:2004)-- The Washington Post is one of the most important daily newspapers in the United States and widely respected for the quality of its reporting. We at the Sudan Embassy to the United States in Washington respect the quality of journalism that the Post represents, but it is obvious to us that in its international coverage the editorial integrity of the paper is not as rigorously maintained as in its domestic coverage, and in the case of Sudan the Post’s coverage is often biased and hateful. We acknowledge that Sudan has been suffering for decades from civil strife and o! ther symptoms of the birthing pains and messiness associated with building a new state in an environment of centuries-old rivalries and conflicts. After all, almost every sub-Saharan country has passed through, or is passing through, similar trials and tribulations. For example, the Post itself recently reported that one of Sudan’s neighbors has suffered three million deaths in the past five years or so, and last month the Assistant Secretary-General of The United Nations for Humanitarian Affairs indicated that the humanitarian situation in a country neighboring Sudan was identical to the situation in the Darfur region of Sudan. Nevertheless, calls for United Nations sanctions and military intervention in Sudan have not been repeated for other countries with humanitarian circumstances worse than those in Darfur.
We are realistic enough to accept the fact that the multi-dimensional identity of Sudan as an African, Arab and Muslim nation makes our country an easy target for often passionate but irrational judgments about our affairs.
Samuel Huntington in his “Clash of Civilizations” erroneously characterized the civil war in Sudan, which has many parallels in Africa, as a case proving his dangerous doctrine of the inevitable clash of cultures and civilizations. A Congressman who has been in the business of drafting bills against the Government of Sudan for years, attributed his actions to the supposed clash of civilizations, and even announced this on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Despite the hostile position of The Washington Post towards Sudan, an African correspondent from the paper, Emily Wax, has been allowed into the Darfur region for at least seven months now. We counted on her professionalism and the reputation of the newspaper she is affiliated with to produce credible reports that would help the world understand the real situation in that region of so much suffering. Regrettably, her fairy-tale reports have misled public opinion in this country and triggered hasty and harmful decisions that have only emboldened the rebels in Darfur and last month encouraged them to declare their ceasefire pledges null and void!
On Monday, November 22 the two rebel groups attacked and captured many villages and towns in the region, killing scores of policemen and civilians and stranded dozens of aid workers in various locations, in violation of the security and humanitarian protocols the rebels had signed less than two weeks earlier in Abuja, Nigeria. As a result, all humanitarian work stopped in many parts of Darfur. However, The Washington Post, rather than strongly condemning the rebels for their violations, as they were condemned by the U.S. State Department, the African Union, the European Union and the United Nations, published another front page article by Emily Wax on Friday, November 26 in an effort to cover up the recent rebel atrocities.
In his two reports to the United Nations Security Council, Secretary-General Kofi Annan confirmed that the rebel groups, and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) in particular, are responsible for 80 percent of the ceasefire violations, including the recent murder of two Save the Children aid workers. His special representative to the Sudan, Jan Pronk, in a December 2004 lecture at the Woodrow Wilson Institute in Washington, described the two rebel ! movements in Darfur as “loose bandits.” Similar to what Alan Kuperman stated in his op-ed in The Washington Post of September 28, 2004, the U.N. official confirmed that the rebels had adopted an “immoral” strategy of inflicting atrocities on their own people by provoking nomad tribal militias in order to trigger an international military intervention. He also attributed the slow pace of the peace process in Darfur to the rebels: “The talks in Abuja had been slow-going largely because on one side were the young, loose groups of rebels without much experience at negotiating. Their negotiators were also not very representative of the fighters on the ground.” Any fair-minded objective person would conclude from such statement that the rebels are the perpetrators of this human tragedy and they must be stopped sooner rather than later. In their campaign of provocation, the so-called Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) attacked on Monday Dec. 27, 2004 Gebaish town in Kurdofan inhibited by Alhamar tribe killed 25 civilians and policemen and burned to the ground a number of buildings there.
It is regrettable that The Washington Post deliberately twisted the facts in its editorial of Monday, December 27 by claiming that the Government of Sudan had taken advantage of the U.N. Security Council Resolution in Nairobi “that shifted attention away from Darfur” by resuming “its killing.” In fact, the opposite was the case. As mentioned earlier, on November 22 the two rebel groups attacked and captured the town of Al Tawella, killing 35 policemen and six civilians, including a physician, as well as other towns and villages, only two days after the U.N.S.C. concluded its historic meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. It was these attacks, which triggered the condemnation of the rebels by the United Nations, European Union, African Union and United States. The paper went so far as to justify the rebels’ campaign of killing aid workers and policemen, and preventing flights and road transportation from relieving the needy population as the product of the rebels’ frustration with the international community for not doing enough to protect them! The Post claimed, “Relief workers are being denied visas.” This is totally false. This embassy has been in the business of issuing visas for that purpose every single day for quite a while now.
Not only that, but the supposedly reliable Post came up with a new death toll of 300,000, without attribution to any reliable agency. Even the figure of 70,000 used by the World Food Organization earlier had been disputed, and many observers considered it an exaggerated number for political purposes. The WFO is reviewing its own claim.
The Post limits our responses to its aggressive campaign against our nation to only 200 words, usually published ten days after their article appears. Even the paper’s ombudsman has failed to make a single comment in response to our concern regarding their coverage of Sudan.
Responsible journalism would seek better, more dispassionate knowledge of the situation in the developing world before jumping to conclusions. Heartbreaking pictures illustrating Ms. Wax’s articles unfortunately reflect all-too-normal living situations in many parts of Africa due to international sanctions or huge foreign debt burdens. Worse, by seeming to embrace the cause of armed insurgencies, the Post plays a dangerous game that encourages those working to destroy fledging nation-states through anarchic terror. These are not freedom fighters, but ruthless insurgents who stop at nothing to achieve their ambitions.