So, this past weekend I went to two documentaries. There is a film festival going on in The Hague this month. I think its because The Hague is supposed to be the city known for international law. It has a whole lot of Courts and international tribunals in the city and most of the people that live here seem to be expatriates like me and my Aunt and they either are lawyers working for some court, or Shell (the oil company). So, anyway....back to the movies.
On Sunday I went to two movies one called "War Photographer" and one called " The Devil Came On Horseback". They were both about horrible wars that were and continue to go on. "War Photographer" was about a war photographer and how he felt about his work and the state of the wars he photographed. He said that the only way he was able to do his job and not think he was a horrible person for benefiting from the people's pain that he was filming was by respecting them. That really stayed with me.
The second movie " The Devil Came On Horseback" was about Darfur genocide and how the Janjaweed were created and trained buy the Sudanese government. The Janjaweed are what the title of the movie refers to, they are like gangs of turban headed men that ride into villages of people in Darfur and burn them down and murder the people there. The Sudanese government pay and train the Janjaweed to do it. The government is Muslim and they hate the people who live in the western part of the country which is where Darfur is located. The Janjaweed even openly admit that the government is how and why they are doing what they do even though the Sudanese government refuses to acknowledge that they have anything to do with the Janjaweed.
In the end the war still happens and all that is happening is that the UN is looking into it. This weekend was the first time I have seen documentaries (except for Michael Moore films and Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth"). I really liked watching them, and I learned a lot. It was kind of depressing though....to realize how horrible the war in Sudan is and how much the people of Darfur suffer and still nothing seems to be being done. I don't know if there is nothing else that can be done or if the rest of the world is just not willing to do anything. What do you think??
Do you think more can be done for Darfur or not? Any suggestions on what should be happening for the people of Darfur?
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Well, I think its really complicated. My friend, Ben, used to be really optomistic about Darfur, and thought that the referral to the ICC would effectively end the crimes being committed in Darfur. He was there researching and documenting what was happening in Darfur, and he really thought that this was the way to help the people. I was pretty skeptical at the time. And...so far the security council referral to the ICC has done nothing. I think that the world community would have to be a whole lot braver to actually help Darfur. I think that we would have to agree to send peacekeepers in...but not only to keep the peace. The way the UN sends blue helmets into conflicts now is basically useless and dangerous because they have no mandate to be effective. The world would have to be brave enough to give the peacekeepers the ability to ACTIVELY stop the violence from occurring...not to just stand by and watch while it happened because they didn't have the ability or the resources or the mandate to step in and put a stop to it. I know that this is a complicated solution because the world would have to figure out how to draw the line between allowing foreigners onto sovereign soil to create peace, and giving the green light to countries like the U.S. from saying that this condoned situations like Iraq. The world would need to be brave and bold and make a statement...and for the collective whole, that's a pretty tall order.
There has to be a way to help the people of Darfur, because just think if people came with guns and killed your family and burned your home and no one did anything to help--and if it happens in one place it can happen in another. That seems crazy here in the US--things like that don't really happen. But they really do in Darfur and those people are just like us with families and lives and they need help. I'm not certain exactly what should be done (I know it should be stopped, but I don't know how) because countries can't just go into other countries because they don't like what is happening, but there has to be a line that defines killing people and burning their homes as a reason for another country to legally go into a country and stop it. It would have to happen through the UN and that would be difficult because countries would have to vote on it and no country is going to vote on anything that would allow another country to come into their country and tell them what to do. Somehow all the countries need to decide that there are some things that are unacceptable no matter where or why they are taking place and killing people in mass should be a determining point. I think it would take some very brave people to stand up and do the right thing no matter what. In the meantime, people are being killed and the people who are left are left with their lives destoyed and it's horrible and unjust and it needs be changed. And someone or something needs to change it or we will continue to have future exterminations of whole people like what happened in Germany under Hitler and what the world said would never happen again, but happened in Rwanda with the rest of the world just letting it happen. I don't know what the solution is, but there has to be one, because people need to remember that it is happening in Darfur today, but without it being stopped it could be happening in any country to anyone next time.
I can't vote on whether or not you should be a war photographer because there isn't an answer that works. I would vote that it could be a really cool job and it could help people, but that you would have to be really careful and I would only think it was okay if I knew you were taking every precaution available. It is a really cool job, but I'm not sure I want you to have a job quite that cool, because I want to know that you are safe and I want to be able to sleep at night. So maybe it would be a cool job if you only went into relatively safe places and maybe went in after the fact and took the "after" pictures instead of the "during" pictures. This answer is from a bestemom perspective so I could be just a bit biased in my answer. Bestemom
hi, I really like your blog. your comments are thought provoking and your pictures are fabulous.
I would recommend you read Anderson Coopers book. I listened to the audio on dvd. he did the reading and it was great. I think you would like it
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