The London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published an op-ed by the paper's former editor Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed, titled "The Death of 300,000 People." (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), June 24, 2004). In the article, translated by MEMRI, Al-Rashed decried the Arab media's indifference to the violence in Sudan.
"They are not the victims of Israeli or American aggression; therefore, they are not an issue for concern,” wrote Al-Rashed. “This is how an approach of indifference towards others outside the circle of conflict with foreigners, and of permitting their murder, is spread as you read and write about the Darfur crisis and consider it an artificial issue, or one unworthy of world protest.
"Is the life of 1,000 people in western Sudan less valuable, or is a single killed Palestinian or Iraqi of greater importance, merely because the enemy is Israeli or American? According to estimates by U.N. delegations inspecting what is happening in the [Darfur] region, 300,000 Sudanese are in danger of liquidation because of the ongoing war there.
"The legal department of the U.N., for its part, says that this is a massacre, and will be treated like Bosnia-Herzegovina, and senior Sudanese officials will be punished like the Serb rulers of Yugoslavia were judged."
Al-Rashed concludes by pointing an accusatory finger at Arab intellectuals: “As for Arab intellectuals who see nothing in the world but the Palestinian and the Iraqi causes, and who consider any blood not spilled in conflicts with foreigners to be cheap and its spilling justifiable - they are intellectual accomplices in the crime.”
"They are not the victims of Israeli or American aggression; therefore, they are not an issue for concern,” wrote Al-Rashed. “This is how an approach of indifference towards others outside the circle of conflict with foreigners, and of permitting their murder, is spread as you read and write about the Darfur crisis and consider it an artificial issue, or one unworthy of world protest.
"Is the life of 1,000 people in western Sudan less valuable, or is a single killed Palestinian or Iraqi of greater importance, merely because the enemy is Israeli or American? According to estimates by U.N. delegations inspecting what is happening in the [Darfur] region, 300,000 Sudanese are in danger of liquidation because of the ongoing war there.
"The legal department of the U.N., for its part, says that this is a massacre, and will be treated like Bosnia-Herzegovina, and senior Sudanese officials will be punished like the Serb rulers of Yugoslavia were judged."
Al-Rashed concludes by pointing an accusatory finger at Arab intellectuals: “As for Arab intellectuals who see nothing in the world but the Palestinian and the Iraqi causes, and who consider any blood not spilled in conflicts with foreigners to be cheap and its spilling justifiable - they are intellectual accomplices in the crime.”