Darfur Delays
PBS Frontline's "On Our Watch" does a brilliant job exploring why the world was so slow to react to the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. This documentary by producer, director and writer Neil Docherty reports that while 200,000 people from Darfur were being killed, 2.5 million driven from their homes and countless women raped, U.N. efforts to stop the slaughter were stalled by China and other allies of Sudan. Frontline's chilling images from Sudan are matched with a detailed explanation of why the international community delayed action.
The Web package includes Docherty's thrilling journal of how he made the documentary, including the time he is put under house arrest after he is accused of being a spy. Here he describes a bar in N'Djamena, the capital of Chad:
The bar in the Novotel seemed to be the place where characters gathered to see if they could land a part in a Graham Greene novel. Most were in costume: the military garb of the Chadian army; the long white robes and headdress preferred by the sundry Sudanese rebel figures, who had taken sanctuary in Chad; the "designer" cut of the rather silly shorts sported by the French soldiers (it wouldn't have taken much to turn them into thongs); the T-shirts of the oil workers from Europe and the States that couldn't fully accommodate their ample girths; the toned down fashions and sensible shoes of the NGO workers.
The Web site also features links to readings on the crisis, an informative timeline and interviews with Sudan's U.N. ambassador, U.N. officials and experts on Darfur. www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darfur/