Quick Note:
Kristoff’s Column Prosecuting Genocide on the link on the sidebar.
His prelude on comments to the post above.
Let me preemptively make a point about China. First, lots of Chinese readers will indignantly note that the U.S. sells much more in weaponry to African countries than China does. True, but we don’t sell to countries that slaughter their own people, and when the U.S. does nasty things I criticize it for it. I’ve written far more critical columns about the U.S. in Iraq or Guantanamo than about China in Darfur — and by the same token, Chinese should be ready to acknowledge their government’s foreign policy outrages.
More broadly, there is a difference between dictatorships or countries with bad governance and those that commit genocide, and Sudan is the worst of the worst. This is the modern equivalent of the Rape of Nanjing, except that if you take the Rabe estimate for the toll in Nanjing, then about ten times as many people have been murdered in Darfur as were slaughtered in the Rape of Nanjing — and Beijing is supplying the arms to commit those massacres in Darfur. Does China really want to go down in history for facilitating the Rape of Darfur?
July 18, 2008 at 1:57 am
At this point I don’t believe that China is extremely concerned with its national image. It is interesting in joining the capitalist economy while selling the lie that they are a communist country. It is duplicitous in nature and from such a foundation human empathy and consideration can never be found.