Darfur, the Olympic Spirit and our Blind Spot

Well, it finally happened. The Winter Olympic flame was extinguished for another 4 years to be lit again in Vancouver 2010. NBC’s coverage of the Olympics was packaged very well with good insights into the athlete’s lives and explanation of sports which were completely alien to me.

While watching the games and celebrating the Olympics spirit (brilliantly exhibited by Shauni Davis and Chad Heddrick) I had a thought. What would it take for the US and rest of the world to see the plight of our fellow men at Darfur. On one hand we have celebration and triumph of the human spirit and on the other side of the Equator the same human spirit was being crushed, raped, mutilated and humiliated by the Junjaweed, a Government supported militant group.

More than 2 million people now live in camps and more than 180,000 (as of May 2005) are assumed to have died in the genocide. I wonder what numerical value will it take for Darfur to stay at the top of our news headlines and for CNN, Fox and MSNBC to cover it as religiously as they covered the missing girl in Aruba. Ohhh, I forget, this is in Africa. The so called armpit of the world. Why bother.

I wonder if the US or the Western world response would have been different if Sudan had proven Oil reserves. Hmmmm…somehow I think things would have been different. I don’t know why but a tweety bird from Iraq tells me as if she has had that experience.

But how easy it is to blame the Government, the media and the United Nations. While I sit back, relax, sip my Widmer Heifewizen and watch Shizuka Arakawa put on the performance of a lifetime to win the Gold, never once did the Darfur conflict enter my consciousness. I guess we all are guilty of having placed Darfur in our blind spot. I guess it is convenient to do so. I guess it’s easy….

Wake up world. Smell the roses, lest the stink of Darfur spoil your appetite.