The New York Times

Friday, September 3, 1999

[...] The U.N. committee will discuss penalties -- not against Sudan but against Christian Solidarity International (C.S.I.), one of the foreign organizations fighting for [...] C.S.I. apologized for these offenses, but the committee decided to lift its credentials as a non-governmental organization with the privilege of speaking, but not voting, at meetings. [...]

ON MY MIND

By A. M. ROSENTHAL

WHEN IS IT NEWS?

After a lifetime in daily journalism, I still worry when real news is treated as no news at all.

Journalists write about what interests them and, they hope, a slice of their particular audiences large enough to keep their newspaper or TV station a daily habit.

In free countries, the variety of journals and broadcasts guarantees information on every subject that touches on what is important in human life, with large dollops of what is deliciously unimportant.

Together they are life colors, separating free people from the dreadful dirty-gray of despotism.

Every subject -- but not quite. Sometimes journalists decided some subjects were not news -- like the Communist slaughter of millions of Soviet citizens, the Holocaust, poverty and racial hatred in our own country, or certain universal essences like religion and sexuality.

Next Tuesday, in a United Nations committee room, delegates of 19 countries will meet on a subject not mentioned on the agenda -- slavery: not slavery yesterday, but today, and by all signs for a lot of tomorrows. It is a subject that with shockingly few exceptions is evaded by journalism and democratic political leadership.

I do not know just why. Perhaps, in journalism, it is because in its magnitude it is too complicated and varied for our poor minds to deal with.

And anyway, there are no real spot slavery stories -- just ongoing horror and misery, and who needs more of that?

Maybe it is because mostly slavery befouls third-world countries that are the current favorites of so many Western journalists, intellectuals, "statesmen" and businessmen.

In some of its forms, slavery enchains the bonded child workers of India and Pakistan, and prostitutes in sexual playgrounds like Thailand.

These varieties do not grab much journalistic or diplomatic attention. The slavery involved in the U.N. meeting is the kind that free people thought had disappeared with Abe Lincoln -- living bodies captured by slave traders and bought and sold like meat, as in Sudan.

Sudan's slaves come from the south of their country. They are trapped in the three-decade-long civil war between the Muslim north and the largely Christian and animist south. Khartoum sends armed raider-trains southward, to take and sell slaves, and grab food sent to war victims by international organizations.

The slaves live slave lives -- murderous labor, rape, hunger, torture, the totality of degradation. They are said to be worked harder, fed less, beaten more than were even the slaves of the American South and Caribbean, because they are cheaper.

Fifty dollars buys a slave, so it really does not matter how long they survive before their bodies are thrown into some river.

The U.N. committee will discuss penalties -- not against Sudan but against Christian Solidarity International (C.S.I.), one of the foreign organizations fighting for the suffering in Sudan's war of starvation and enslavement.

One of the 19 nations complained that C.S.I., which has supporters worldwide, had sponsored a Sudanese rebel to speak at a committee session in Geneva. But it had not clearly identified him or used the proper letterhead. The country was Sudan.

C.S.I. apologized for these offenses, but the committee decided to lift its credentials as a nongovernmental organization with the privilege of speaking, but not voting, at meetings.

The U.N. Economic and Social Council then found that the committee itself had violated the rules of procedure and ordered the whole vicious comedy repeated.

One of the reasons Sudan singled out C.S.I. for attack was its support in America, which gives its work particular attention. The U.S. voted against Sudan, alone.

The roster of voters with Sudan included Cuba, China, Lebanon, India, Pakistan, Russia, Senegal and Algeria.

This piece of nastiness is not about procedural technicality. It is about permitting a slave-taking nation to stifle an organization that struggles for slave-freeing.

If its credentials are lifted, Christian Solidarity International will not be able to speak at the U.N. anymore. But it will continue to work in Sudan at even greater danger. And it will continue to get the help of those who believe that slavery is news, wherever and whenever.

For those who agree, visit these Web sites: www.CSI-int.ch; www.FreedomHouse.org/religion; www.Anti-slavery.org.