Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof applauded activists' response to the violence in Sudan's Darfur region yesterday, but called on Americans not to grow fatigued and apathetic toward the atrocities that continue to ravage the troubled region.
Kristof, a columnist and former reporter for the New York Times, recounted with vivid and often gruesome detail stories of systematic rape, mutilation and murder that he has collected in his 10 visits to Darfur.
"I don't just want to inform you. I want to galvanize you," Kristof told about 400 people in Sayles Hall. "Washington has provided leadership when national interests are at stake, but whenever national values are at stake, then, in fact, leadership comes from folks like you."
Kristof explained that there's a special imperative to address the conflict in Sudan because the killings, which the White House and Congress have identified as genocide, represent a "tearing apart of the human fabric." He acknowledged the injustice in weighing one human atrocity against another, noting that far more people die from diseases like AIDS and malaria each year than all those killed in Darfur. Still, Kristof argued, the quantity of lives lost should not be the bottom line.
"At the end of the day, we have a moral compass, and it is moved in part by the degree of suffering, but it is also moved in part by the degree of evil," he said.
Kristof said that in all his years of reporting, he has never confronted an issue so affecting as the situation in Sudan. Kristof received his first Pulitzer in 1990, for his coverage of the Tiananmen Square protests, and his second in 2006, for his commentary on the atrocities in Darfur.
Recalling his first visit to the region, Kristof described how Arab janjaweed militias hired by the Sudanese government would loiter around wells - few and far between across the scorched Darfur countryside - waiting to attack black African villagers. The fear in eyes of parents forced to send their children to collect water was an image Kristof could not forget, and one that obliged him to use his column to write about the unbelievable horrors that plagued Darfur.
"In rural Darfur, you don't see living humans except for the janjaweed and some of the Arab tribes that contribute to them," Kristof said. "You drive for mile after mile after mile and it's just burnt-out villages."
In a quivering voice, Kristof - who during his speech showed photographs of victims he met in Darfur - recounted the first time he saw a man whose eyes had been gouged out, a sight he came to see many more times because of its success, as with rape, in terrorizing victims and their tribes. Rape, he said, is a particularly crippling weapon because of the stigma it carries in Sudanese culture. Testimony to the crimes is dangerous and can lead to accusations and criminal charges of fornication, Kristof said.
Kristof's talk was a part of the Human Rights Film Festival and followed a screening of the documentary film "The Devil Came on Horseback."
The film illustrates the conflict in Darfur through the lens of American military observer Brian Steidle, who was embedded with African Union peacekeeping troops in the region. His stories and photographs of the atrocities there ignited a controversial dialogue about genocide in Darfur when they were featured in several of Kristof's columns in 2005.
Kristof discussed his apprehension about engaging in "genocide porn" - relying on gut-wrenching imagery to oblige a stronger, swifter response to the Darfur issue.
"But that's what Darfur looks like," Kristof said. "That's what is going on. And I think the only way we are able to build a response in this country and in other countries is to remind people exactly what it looks like."
In light of a historical standard of unresponsiveness to incidents of genocide, Kristof acknowledged that the global response to Darfur has been "OK." He cited the relatively swift identification of the conflict as bona fide genocide and a commendable medical aid response as having saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
But medical aid alone, Kristof noted, "feels incredibly inadequate." He recalled victims of the genocide telling aid workers there was nothing they could give them, and that they simply wanted to die.
Kristof identified two possible trajectories for the situation in Darfur. One would involve a coordinated diplomatic effort to leverage the Sudanese government in the capital city of Khartoum to a peace agreement, a possibility with reasonable chances of success. The bleaker possible future for Darfur, Kristof said, is the intensification of chaos and violence in Sudan that would threaten to rekindle a greater North-South civil war, as well as conflicts in Sudan's neighboring countries.
"That, I'm afraid, is the path we're on right now," Kristof said. "If that happens, then Darfur is going to be remembered as a modest prologue to a much, much bloodier conflict."
Janjaweed militiamen have already invaded Chad under the auspices of the Sudanese interior ministry, Kristof said. There they have burned villages and camps, further stressing an already tense relationship between Sudanese refugees and their impoverished, reluctant Chadian hosts.
Kristof explained that the power of personal stories keeps him committed to passing on testimony of the atrocities in Darfur. Testimony, he said, is the only way victims can fight back against genocide. Amid stories of the worst of mankind, Kristof said he also finds inspiration in the greatest examples of moral courage.
Kristof commended the response of student activists across the country to Darfur, and reassured them that their efforts to pressure lawmakers toward action are effective.
"There are a lot of things going on in Darfur that really make me question humanity, but that response does reassure me to some degree," Kristof said.
Film festival organizer Carly Edelstein '08 said that Kristof was a clear choice for a speaker because his long career covering human rights issues enables him to put the Darfur issue in context.
"We wanted to do something big and bold," Edelstein said of inviting Kristof. She said that the event's organizers had hoped to bring him to last year's festival, but he was too expensive. This year, widespread sponsorship from campus groups and outside organizations made his visit possible, she said.
