Transcript

Host: This is “On The Line,” and I'm Eric Felten. This is “On The Line,” and I'm Eric Felten. President George W. Bush called for an end to the violence in Sudan's western Darfur region:

President Bush: “For too long the people of Darfur have suffered at the hands of a government that is complicit in the bombing, murder and rape of innocent civilians. My administration has called these actions by their rightful name, genocide. The world has a responsibility to help put an end to it."

Host: Attacks on villages in Darfur have left hundreds of thousands dead and driven more than two million people into refugee camps. Mr. Bush says that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has frustrated efforts to stop the killing:

President Bush: "I call on President Bashir to stop his obstruction and to allow the peacekeepers in and to end the campaign of violence that continues to target innocent men, women and children. And I promise this to the people of Darfur, the United States will not avert our eyes from a crisis that challenges the conscience of the world.”

Host: President Bush announced that the United States is imposing new sanctions against Sudan: Bush: "First the department of treasury is tightening US economic sanctions on Sudan. With this new effort the United States will more aggressively enforce existing sanctions against Sudan's government. As part of this effort the treasury department will add 30 companies owned or controlled by the government of Sudan to its list of specially designated nationals."

 Is U.S. pressure enough to make a difference in Darfur? And what should other nations be doing? Joining me to talk about it is actress and human-rights advocate Mia Farrow. Mia Farrow is goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, and she has traveled both to Darfur and to neighboring Chad, where many Sudanese refugees have fled. Mia Farrow, welcome. Thanks for joining us today.

Farrow: Thank you.

Host: Now, you’ve been to Darfur a number of times, and over the course of your visits, have things been getting better, the same, getting worse?

Farrow: I would say worse. In 2004 -- I mean, I passed villages in 2004 that were simply ashes by 2006, and a level of despair has settled into the camps. You know, in 2004, when our U-N vehicles would pull up to the camps, the people would chant, “U-N! U-N!” you know, and there was so much hope that there would be that U-N peacekeeping force, that it was going to come any minute. By June of 2006, it was --people were saying, “Nobody's coming, are they? They're not coming.” And that was so much worse, and, of course, more people have entered the camps. Our UNICEF director in Sudan said many of the camps are having to turn people away -- that they simply cannot accommodate the influx. So, it's an enormous problem, and many, many aid agencies and aid workers have been evacuated from, actually, the hugest of the camps, Gereida Camp. Seventy aid workers were evacuated because they themselves were attacked.

Host: Let's talk a little bit about that. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte has said that “when it comes to humanitarian access, the government of Sudan's record is not encouraging. The denial of visas, the harassment of aid workers, and other measures have created the impression that the government of Sudan is engaged in a deliberate campaign of intimidation.” What's your sense of the government of Sudan and their attitude towards aid workers?

Farrow: Toward the aid workers, they are not making it easy for us. You know, we need to maintain our access, but our staff and other aid agencies are just overwhelmed with the bureaucracy, the paperwork to move from one area to another, and camps are being blocked. I mean, no, they're not -- they haven't been as supportive as we would like to have seen, in that or anything else in the Darfur region. But, yeah, our aid workers are there sustaining human lives and putting their own lives at risk to do it, though there have been immense withdrawals. I think there are two thousand fewer than there were a year ago. And there are one million people that, at present, we are not able to reach, according to the Holmes Report -- one million civilians that no aid agencies can reach at this moment.

Host: Now, as you've become more vocal and known for your activism on Darfur, has it become harder for you to get the access that you've had in the past to visit camps?

Farrow: Yeah. I suspect I would not get another visa into Darfur anytime soon. But I go to eastern Chad, which, in many ways, is worse than Darfur because it does not have the immense humanitarian infrastructure. As fragile as that infrastructure is, it is in existence and it is sustaining lives in Darfur. We don't have that level of efficiency in our aid organizations in eastern Chad. Eastern Chad is an inferno.

Host: How many people have fled to eastern Chad?

Farrow: I think it's two hundred and forty thousand since 2004.

Host: Now, you and your son Ronan recently wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which you said that Beijing -- referring to China -- “is uniquely positioned to put a stop to the slaughter, yet they have, so far, been unabashed in their refusal to do so.” Has anything changed in China with regard to Sudan?

Farrow: I will say there's been a change when the people in Darfur -- Darfur's people -- experience a difference and the aid workers experience that difference. So far, it's just talk. I mean, they did appoint an envoy, which is new. A top official did visit Darfur. That's new. They have expressed some chagrin at the linking of the Olympic games with Darfur. I mean, clearly, they're being very protective about those games, and their slogan, “One World, One Dream,” left them wide open for us to say, “Well, there is one nightmare that they cannot be allowed to sweep under the rug.” And, like it or not, the Olympic games are now being associated with the atrocities in Darfur.

Host: What is China's interest in Darfur at this point?

Farrow: Well, China has two immense oil companies in southern Sudan, not Darfur, and it has, to date, poured more than four billion dollars into Sudan, into Khartoum's coffers. Some seventy percent of this money is used to attack the people of Darfur. I was going to say, “Genocide is expensive business.” There are the Antonov bombers. There are the attack helicopters. There are the trucks, the small arms, the arming and training of the janjaweed. All of this is expensive, so for a country that has no self-defensive need for any armed force, they're using some seventy percent of their oil revenues to attack innocent civilians in the Darfur region.

Host: And yet there's supposed to be U-N embargo on sale of arms to Sudan.

Farrow: Tell it to China. Tell it to Russia. You know, the arms are getting through, and I think China is the largest -- China and Russia are where they're purchasing their arms from. There's brisk trade in arms from both countries, I think especially China.

Host: And you talked about how people in the camps had had high expectations and hopes that the U-N might bring a measure of deliverance for them, and yet that has not come. What's your sense of the role that China has played at the U-N in perhaps seeing that the U-N not be as aggressive as it might otherwise have been?

Farrow: With that relationship that we talked about -- the oil sales -- with that relationship between China and Sudan, Sudan has purchased the best watchdog on the Security Council. China has rendered toothless every single resolution to help the people of Darfur. Even the most potentially effective one, last August 31st, resolution 1706, which would have provided for twenty-two thousand peacekeepers to enter Darfur -- it ended up having to request permission of the government of Sudan. That was China's doing, and Russia abstained. But, you know, otherwise there wouldn't have been any resolution, but, in effect, it was stillborn. So, we would hope to see China, with “One World, One Dream,” arrive at a new attitude for its entry into the international community as a respective co-tradesperson, and I think they have a ways to go. This is their post-Tiananmen Square dance card, their calling card, their staging of the games. Well, I think they have a ways to go before we can let them forget what's going on right now.

Host: What's your sense of how effective the U-N could be, even if there were to be more sanctions, more resolutions? What resolutions and embargoes and sanctions have been so far don't seem to have made that much of a difference.

Farrow: Yeah, we're really seeing the paralysis of the United Nations in the face of the vetoes by China and the abstentions by Russia. It is very sad to see the U-N, our greatest hope, our greatest -- the greatest alliance of nations, with what we hoped would be the best of intentions, really seemingly gathered in their own sort of self-serving interests. There has to be a better United Nations to serve the people of this world. One would like to see that. I mean, personally, I would like to see a standing force at the United Nations -- one, a determination of -- never mind genocide. You could call it “atrocities of the worst kind” or “ethnic cleansing.” When we see a government perpetrating an all-out assault upon its innocent civilians, there should be an automatic standing force to come, to stand and protect innocent civilians and the aid workers who are putting their own lives on the line to do what the world has just abdicated from doing -- and the U-N, too. So, it's really shameful. We need a better United Nations.

Host: And, Miss Farrow, you and other activists have called for a linkage between China's Olympic games and the issue of Darfur but also for other pressure to be brought on China, in particular that the businesses with either stockholdings in China or business with China -- re-evaluate that, perhaps divest of those efforts, and we've seen now that Fidelity, one of the largest investment firms in the U.S., has gotten rid of its stock in, or has said that it's gotten rid of its stock in Chinese oil company because of the Darfur situation.

Farrow: Mm-hmm.

Host: What is your hope for this strategy of putting pressure on China?

Farrow: I think that now, after we're now in the fifth year of suffering of the people of Darfur, so we have to look at it as a multifaceted approach. Undoubtedly, the ultimate solution lies at a conference table. We've now stopped wishing and wringing our hands for that U-N peacekeeping force. We wish, but what we're going to have to do is get a peace agreement in the process. We have to get the government of Sudan to consent. I see now what I've really been advocating for up until September -- end of September was that resolution 1706 be implemented. It's not going to happen without the consent of the government, so we would like to see China bring its unique point of leverage to bear on Khartoum so that they would admit the U-N peacekeepers that stop the bombing, rein in the janjaweed, and begin a real comprehensive peace process, perhaps patterned after the North-South agreement. We would like to see the U.S. government involved in that and committed to that to a much higher degree than they are now, pursuing a peace agreement that's deemed to be just by Darfur's people.

Host: What room is there for the U.S. to take stronger action on Darfur at this point? We have both the backdrop of the Iraq war and the issues of the U.S. being hesitant to take action against an Islamic country. What's your sense of what the U.S. has done to date and what room there is for more action?

Farrow: There's room for more action. Even if we're not talking about military action, which I don't think anybody thinks is a great idea, and you're right -- after Iraq and during Iraq, the U.S. doesn't have the stomach or the resources for any other sort of military engagement. But, certainly, it does have the capacity and the obligation, I think. I don't know why it hasn't happened, but since 2003, there should have been three top-level envoys working full-time. I don't mean part-time, flying in and out three times a year out of Khartoum and, you know, claiming victories or their dismay that nothing has happened. It should be, you know, in D.C. and in Sudan, working full-time, around the clock. I mean Richard Holbrook-level smart people on the job full-time, in pursuit of that peace agreement that would ultimately -- the end goal, we would like to see the peacekeepers in there and security for Darfur's people. But I think that this step has to happen. It has to be a peace process through which the consent of the government of Sudan will come and the peacekeepers will come, and hopefully order and peace and protection -- finally, protection. I have to say, over my four trips into the region, the plea for protection was the thing that echoed across Darfur from village to village and camp to camp. Even before the plea for water, even before the need for more food, when food drop-offs were two months late, even before the plea for education for their children -- because the people of Darfur are conscientious parents, and they want their children educated. But first came the plea for protection, and we can scarcely imagine a feeling of, now sustained for more than four years, just being purely terrified day and night.

Host: Well, there is, providing some small measure of protection, a very small African Union force there. Is there room for the governments of Africa, through the African Union, to take a more aggressive role?

Farrow: I think that there was hope. This is an embryonic body. The African Union, as you know, patterned after the United Nations and following Rwanda -- and they came into Sudan and they were admitted to Sudan under a pathetic mandate that did not allow them to protect civilians, so they themselves -- in addition to which, after the mandate, they were not supported in the essential ways that were necessary by the international community. “African solutions to African problems” became the mantra of the international community, and yet we fail to support the African Union in the ways that they needed it. When I was there, they hadn't been paid, some, in two and three months. Of course, they were under-armed, undermanned, and deeply demoralized in every way. Back when I was first there in 2004, there were less than seven hundred soldiers there for an area the size of France, and even now there are only five thousand, and only some of those are armed. And they're only allowed to use those weapons in their own self-defense. I think it's fifteen have been killed -- it may be more than that -- since 2004. So, they themselves are being attacked, and they don't have the capacity to do the very thing they came there for, which is to protect Darfur's people and bring a measure of peace and security to the region.

Host: One other source of possible intervention could come from the Arab world. Many of the people of Darfur who have been killed, raped, displaced from their homes are themselves Muslim.

Farrow: All of them -- all of them are Muslim.

Host: And yet where has the Arab League been? Where has the Organization of the Islamic Conference been?

Farrow: You may well ask. I don't have the answer to that. I find it bewildering myself that the slaughter of Muslims by Muslims should not trigger some sense of rage in the Arab world, and I would love to see the Arab League step forward to protect the people of Darfur. There's a terrible fear -- There was talk of Egypt coming in with peacekeepers, but a terrible fear in Darfur when that was announced that they would simply join the janjaweed in committing the same kinds of atrocities. So, I think the people of Darfur are afraid of that idea, but we would like to see -- I mean, all of us in the human family would like to see an equal measure of outrage from the Arab world. Bashir has been able to say, “Oh, this is a Zionist-led movement to save the people of Darfur” or “This is a Western Colonialist movement.” In fact, it's a humanitarian effort of concerned human beings for other people who are in peril. But we would like to see that same level of outrage that has now risen in the United States. Advocacy groups have been really, really shouting, and that message is being heard. But we're not seeing it or hearing it around the world to the same degree. Here in America, in the United States, we are seeing, I think -- Darfur has risen to the level that we saw during apartheid, but we're not seeing that same level of outrage in Europe, in the Arab world, in Asia, in Malaysia. It's just not there. So, I don't know what it will take, but to the extent that those who are hearing -- and I know that your listeners are not in the United States -- it would be great if everybody could make themselves informed. You know, I set up a website, miafarrow.org, and it's not a money-grubbing website. It's just to inform people who want to know more. I've my blogs from the region. I link to sites. If you want to give, I put those and the measure of your donation that actually reaches the people in the field. If you want to inform yourself, I have links to sites, 'cause I had to go -- It took me -- It's still taking me -- I mean, to inform myself, I have to go to such a variety of sites to get the reports and inform myself, 'cause so much of this is beneath the radar, so I have it all compiled on one site for people like myself. It also has my photographs that I've taken over four trips into the region, so I would invite people to go there.

Host: I'm afraid we only have a couple of minutes left, Miss Farrow, but just to finish up, what do you think is the thing that needs to happen next -- the most important next step to try to stop the suffering in Darfur?

Farrow: There has to be a peace process in the works, and it has to be a commitment by the international community to support a peace process. I referred to that before. I mean, the United States really needs to take leadership here in having a full-time commitment to secure a peace process and get all parties to the table, and that means responsible leadership within rebel groups. The end goal, what we want to see, is protection for Darfur's people. We want the government of Sudan to stop the bombing. We want them to stop the janjaweed, to rein in the janjaweed and disarm them. Who's going to get them to do that? They laugh at the United States. When President Bush was at the United Nations, we saw Bashir openly laughing when Bush was talking, addressing them, calling their atrocities a genocide. So, it is -- I don't think the United States, other than pursuing a political solution, is going to get very far, but we would like to see all the world join in trying to get peacekeepers in there, and, really, we would like to see China step to the fore and China's business partners do their part in persuading China to use its unique point of leverage to persuade Khartoum to admit the peacekeepers and participate in a just peace process.

Host: I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today, but I'd like to thank my guest, Mia Farrow, actress and goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. Before we go, I'd like to welcome you to send us your questions or comments. You can send them to our website at www.voanews.com/ontheline. For “On The Line,” I'm Eric Felten.