Sudan, we die in silence: the indifference of the world media system towards the “Country of Blacks”, devastated by war and a shocking humanitarian crisis

ROMA – In the silence and indifference of the mainstream media and the international community, people are dying in Sudan. The most terrible humanitarian catastrophe of recent years does not seem to interest anyone except the victims. Victims who do not deserve a headline in the newspapers, images on TV, even just a mention in foreign press reviews on the radio, or a brief agency launch. Nothing. Only silence. Precisely when the humanitarian crises in Gaza and Ukraine are present – rightly – on the front pages of all the media and on TV with almost unified networks.

The perverse mechanics of selective indignation. Sudan suffers the perverse mechanics of selective indignation in an interconnected world where information and images circulate to and from any place, even the most remote on the planet. As in Roman times, for the Italian press, the world has the contours of the world that we know or decide to know.

Why aren’t Sudanese victims in the news? Yet there is a war there too, which broke out just a year ago. At the beginning it seemed a reason for great hope that there was coverage of the war in Sudan by the Italian media system. Perhaps for the first time an African conflict was told outside of specialized contexts and gained space, stories, analyzes and insights. A year later, silence and indifference descend on us. With the conflict paying the tragic price of deaths, displaced persons, mutilated people, raped women, children forcibly recruited and even all the ingredients of a new genocide in Darfur for months now,

Let’s try to explain. It might seem cynical to say this: but the collective and individual tragedies of Sudan disappear from the radar, they no longer make news because they happen in Sudan (“the country of blacks” (Bil?d al-S?d?nor “Country of black men” in Arabic). What is Africa if not the country of wars, tribal conflicts, hunger and droughts? What do we love to talk about that continent if not its infernal circles when those gloomy scenarios are functional to our fundraisers and to our neo-colonial interventions with hyper-mediatized landings of rescue troops in Mali, Ivory Coast, Central African Republic, Rwanda. Then and only then do the “African facts” become newsworthy, acquire the status and dignity of television or radio reports and front pages of the newspapers. In short, the victims at command for what serves us and not so much for the brutality and inhumanity of the facts that upset their individual and community existences.

At least compassion and solidarity. We, however, want to tell, or rather, shout out, what is happening in the “Country of Blacks”. Because those victims are of the same flesh as us; they are broken destinies of people like us who deserve, at the very least, our compassion (in the literal sense of the term to suffer, suffer together), our concrete solidarity, our immediate help, our peace initiatives.

The usual brutal struggle of the Arabs against the Africans. Sudan was plunged into chaos in April last year, when long-simmering tensions between the army led by General Abdel Fattah Burhan and the paramilitary rapid support forces commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo erupted into street clashes in capital, Khartoum. The fighting quickly spread to other parts of the country, particularly urban areas, but in Darfur it took a different form, with brutal attacks by the Arab-dominated Rapid Support Forces against civilians of African descent. Thousands of people were killed.

Yet another alarm from the United Nations. Sudan risks the worst hunger crisis in the world, punctuated by rampant malnutrition. The United Nations raised the alarm on Wednesday. Edem Wosornu, director of humanitarian operations, told the United Nations Security Council that a third of the Sudanese population, or 18 million people, are already facing serious food insecurity and that in some areas of the western region of Darfur catastrophic levels of famine by the arrival of the “lean season” in May.

In Darfur, one child dies every two hours. “A recent assessment revealed that in Zamzam camp in El Fasher, North Darfur, one child dies every two hours,” he said. Our humanitarian partners estimate that in the coming weeks and months, more than 220 thousand children could die from malnutrition.” While the world’s spotlight is on elsewhere, the author deplored the fact that “a humanitarian parody is taking place in Sudan under the cloak of international inattention and inaction”.

The dramatic decline in food production. Due to the conflict, cereal production in 2023 fell by 46% compared to 2022, and by up to 80% in areas where the conflict was most intense, according to a report FAO published last week. According to the director of FAO’s Office of Emergencies and Resilience Rein Paulsen, the “food production outlook for 2024 is bleak”. Farmers have been forced to abandon their fields and grain production has collapsed since hostilities spread to Sudan’s breadbasket, Jazeera State, in December.

SCi vuudan was less than 5% funded. In these circumstances, the provision of humanitarian aid should be a lifeline, Wosornu said, but the UN appeal for $2.7 billion for Sudan was less than 5% funded, with just 131 Millions of dollars. It hopes that the high-level donor conference for Sudan and its neighbors, to be held in Paris on 15 April, will lead to “tangible commitments” to support aid operations “in the face of looming famine”.

A media par conditio is needed. Never before have we shaken our apathy and escape the traps of selective indignation as in the times of instant tele-reality nourished by a bombardment of continuous news. The faces of suffering, the destinies of the victims of war, of all wars in every latitude, must be worthy of our attention. There is no people in the world addicted to war and violence. There are no bearable circles of hell. Africa’s wars are no exception and deserve to be known and to be accompanied by peace efforts and humanitarian support. Let us break the silence on Sudan, therefore, and on all the Sudanese in Africa who do not have the dignity of our front pages. Restimao humans with the “Country of blacks”.

* Jean-Léonard Touadi is a politician, essayist, academic, currently an FAO official, originally from the Republic of Congo. He was the first African citizen elected to the Italian Parliament.