Remember when we said that Black Lives Matter? We didn’t mean it. That much is clear now, as the world watches a war that is killing tens of thousands, that has displaced more than 10 million and which is threatening to devour 13 million more through Sudan: Where is the Will”>famine
– and barely gives it a glance. Most of those are Black lives and it could not be more obvious that, to an indifferent world, they don’t matter at all.Don’t be too hard on yourself if you haven’t yet guessed which conflict, and project of ethnic cleansing, I’m speaking of. With a few honourable exceptions, it’s barely covered on TV, on the radio or in the papers. Most politicians never mention it. There are no mass demonstrations on the streets, no hashtags on social media. Instead, the war in Sudan is out of sight and out of mind – for reasons that say a little about Africa and much more about everyone else.
The conflict has raged since April 2023, so there’s been no shortage of time to notice it. Nor is it lacking epic scale. On the contrary, aid organisations say Sudan faces “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis”. The suffering is not complicated or abstract but heart-rending brimming with horror.
Take the testimony of one young woman called Maryam Suleiman who fled Sudan for neighbouring Chad. She told the New York Times about the day that armed forces stormed into her village: executing all Black males over 10 years old including her five brothers; killing infants; raping girls; declaring there was no place for Black people in Sudan.
How then is this attempt to complete destruction not one of our dominant issues? There’s scarcely any capacity left for this one disaster unfolding around us.
Still this does not answer why activists have been so lethargic – Could western progressives just do not know who to root for?
Faced with such conundrum many prefer just looking away rather than understanding some clashes pit two just causes against each other while others involve wickedness claiming to act in name oppressed.
The people should apologize for ignoring them in their desperation – pretending we ever cared.