Who knew that I'd be praising Mia Farrow and Steven Spielberg on one of their activist missions? But this time, they're using their clout for something entirely admirable. Consider two things:
1. Beijing, China will host the 2008 Olympics despite an atrocious humna rights record.
2. China has blocked action against Sudan's genocide, because of enormously important oil ties and China's impenetrable vote on the UN's security council.
And yet, wonder of wonders, visible people are connecting the dots for the good:
Ms. Farrow, a good-will ambassador for the United Nations Children’s Fund, has played a crucial role, starting a campaign last month to label the Games in Beijing the “Genocide Olympics” and calling on corporate sponsors and even Mr. Spielberg, who is an artistic adviser to China for the Games, to publicly exhort China to do something about Darfur. In a March 28 op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal, she warned Mr. Spielberg that he could “go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games,” a reference to a German filmmaker who made Nazi propaganda films.
Four days later, Mr. Spielberg sent a letter to President Hu Jintao of China, condemning the killings in Darfur and asking the Chinese government to use its influence in the region “to bring an end to the human suffering there,” according to Mr. Spielberg’s spokesman, Marvin Levy.
China soon dispatched Mr. Zhai to Darfur, a turnaround that served as a classic study of how a pressure campaign, aimed to strike Beijing in a vulnerable spot at a vulnerable time, could accomplish what years of diplomacy could not.
God be praised! While Hollywood has been notoriously unhelpful on the question of how contraception, abortion, and promiscuity hurt women, their social consciousness has allowed them to embrace the fight against injustice both in Tibet and the Sudan. If these media elites understand one thing, it's the power of a visible campaign of shame against an entity who needs to save face. They've now hit the jackpot.
National pride in China has been surging over the coming Olympics, with a gigantic clock in Tiananmen Square counting down the minutes to the Games, and Olympic souvenir stores sprouting all over with the “One World, One Dream” Beijing Olympics motto.
In public, Bush administration officials have been relatively restrained in welcoming China’s new diplomatic zeal.
“We have indications at this point that the Chinese are now taking even a more aggressive role than they have in the past,” Andrew S. Natsios, the Bush administration’s special envoy to Sudan, told a Senate panel on Wednesday. “I think they may be the crucial actors.”
J. Stephen Morrison, a Sudan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said he had been warning Chinese officials that Darfur and the Olympics could collide, to no avail.
“I’ve been talking to them and telling them this is coming, this is coming,” Mr. Morrison said. “I told them, there’s an infrastructure out there, they need to feed the beast, and you’re in their sight.” Before, he said, “they kind of shrugged.”
But there is growing concern inside China that Darfur is hurting Beijing’s image.
Alas, "preserving their image" (or "feeding the beast" as Morrison calls it) is not necessarily as pure an intention as actually attempting to "protect innocent life," but it just may work to the same end. In this case, one nation's pride (saving face) could serve to lift the humble in another nation, but it's a start we can all applaud. Let's pray it escalates into something that will truly end horrific suffering in Africa.
[Just found this marvelous mapping tool here. Perhaps we can pass this along to others as a homeschool resource as well as informing ourselves.]
Comments