Stephen Spielburg, The Olympics and Darfur
Yes,Stephen Spielburg says he will boycott the Olympic Games in Beijing in his capacity as artistic adviser as a protest against China's lack of stance against Sudan in respect of Darfur.
Big news, all over the BBC website and the evening papers here.
However, there have been many reports recently that the humanitarian situation is much worse in Somalia than it is in Darfur. Yet, Darfur gets all the attention. For the last five years they have been saying that 2 million people have been displaced and 200,000 have lost their lives... and these figures never change. I wonder how accurate they are.
Anyway, however complicated the situationj in Darfur is, it is quite easy for people in the West to look to China to put pressure on their friends in the Sudanese government. China is an easy scapegoat, as we look on with envy at how China is 'neo-colonising' Africa.
Not such an easy business to look at the repsonsibility of the US and the EU for what is going on in Somalia, since their own sponsored TFG government took power with help of America's best friend in the region Ethiopia... so the West just conveniently forgets about this part of the world.
I think it is about time Stephen Spielburg made a film about the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, showing us how the US encouraged one country to go to war against another, showing the use of lies and propaganda and mis-information to justify itself...
posted by Charles Roffey and Fred O at 22:53
1 Comments:
Oh my God I so agree with you! Despite the horrific poverty that's devastating most of Africa (including of course Sudan) the situation in Somalia has been worse considerably for a longer time and with more casualties but for some reason it's just not 'cool' to stand up for Somalia. I think it's interesting to see the rise of (esp American) actors such as George Clooney taking part in politics all of a sudden and speaking so passionately for Darfur without glancing at what's going on in Moqdishu.
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