With respect to international attention directed towards Darfur, the Huffington Post reported, “Darfur: The Genocide the World Got Tired of” in August of this year. One day prior to publishing the article, tens of thousands of displaced civilians, largely women and children, were attacked by military and security forces of the dominant national regime of Sudan, the National Congress Party (NCP) led by President Omar Al-Bashir. Those who were not arrested, and threatened with torture were beaten, and robbed. The humiliation is enough to writhe the stomachs of any thinking person, all the more so the immediate relations of the survived forced to live abroad, without the means to help their people. Truly, the appalling neglect of Darfur in diaspora, especially in Egypt, where so many have fled since the beginning of the conflict, is part of the genocide, albeit in a slower, while equally torturous form.
Imagine 140 heavily armed vehicles rolling into El Salam camp, where on August 5th countless people were unprotected by the UN/African Union (UNAMID), which has vowed, principally, to protect civilians. Ironically, the UNAMID headquarters was only a few miles away from El Salam, in Nyala, the capital of Darfur. UNAMID has often been restricted from accessing scenes where atrocities have been committed by the state, adding to terrifying lack of security for so many tens of thousands of innocents. Silence, and impunity is, in such contexts, a prerequisite to the stability of UN, and NGO missions. While the UN looks to UNAMID for field knowledge, the indigenous Radio Dabanga is often the only reliable, and consistent source of awareness for outsiders.