Sunday, April 10, 2011

Maybe Genocide Is Easier to Get Away with than Rigging Elections

It always makes me angry when opposing sides of any political battle that has ethnic or religious overtones start murdering supporters of the other side, and the UN and the West look on in disbelief and seem incapable of taking action.
Ivory Coast is just the latest example. Both sides, Gbagbo and Outtarra, have let their partisans and troops burn alive, throw down wells, hack to death, machine gun, and rape people, mostly civilians, on the other side - with only the weakest of efforts to stop the slaughter. The UN is quietly saying, "You've got to control your troops."
Yet, in November, when the election was in doubt and the UN decided that Outtarra had won, there was no hesitation. Gbagbo's funds were frozen, his credentials were lifted, his inner circle was unable ot get visas, i.e., there was a general loud international outcry.
Where is that rigor and search for order now that civilians are being terrorized, displaced (more than 1 million have left their homes and villages and about 130,000 have fled to Liberia) and murdered? It doesn't exist. Why? I cannot answer.
Maybe the world is too busy elsewhere, like in Libya, to muster the effort required to stop the killings.
Maybe somebody will act when the stench of rotting bodies is so overwhelming that somebody finally has to do something (remember Bill Clinton in Bosnia, after Europe had dithered for months while ethnic cleansing was ongoing and the TV images proved it; remember the Holocaust, when we had eyewitness reports, Nazi planning documents, and aerial surveillance as proof and yet it took years to get international action).
Maybe we just expect violence in Africa and aren't shocked by it.
This last would be the worst possible reason for inaction because it would speak massively of prejudice and the international double standard that Africa so often tries to help us understand and rise above.

No comments:

Post a Comment