Ann Curry interviews with al-Bashir

As I said yesterday, I wanted to look more into the linked articles Ann Curry did. They are actually links to two very impressive interviews she did with president al-Bashir. This web page has two videos and a written transcript of the first video. I found them to be very VERY insightful.

The first video gives a good introduction with the statistics of the murdered and displaced victims of Darfur and also lets us know that this is the first television interview done in three years with a western journalist. Way to go Curry!

After watching this video, I also feel a little guilty about being so hard on the US and their action in Darfur. Who I really should have been criticizing is the president. I found his statements horrifying and hope to God we never have a president that ignorant to what is occurring in his country. In the first video he completely denied that the atrocities that have been reporter on were in fact true. During a good portion of the interview, he related the Darfur crisis to what happened in Iraq and blamed the US for wanting to interfere for the sake of oil. (Probably not a bad accusation seeing as, in my opinion, we’ve done that before) However, I think that in this situation that comment is completely irrelevant. I believe that the US and the UN are interfering for the sake of stopping crimes against humanity.

Rather than me explaining it, here is a clip of exact words that were spoken:
“Ann Curry: Mr. President, I have this map from the U.S. Department of State that shows more than a thousand villages in the Darfur region — more than a thousand burned.
And the question is, how can this be done by Arab militias without the support of the Sudanese government? This is shocking.
Omar al-Bashir: What do you think about the picture that Colin Powell presented before the national security that confirmed and illustrated the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? What do you think about it?
Curry: You're saying this is not true?
Al-Bashir: This picture is the same fabrication and the same picture as the ones Colin Powell presented about Iraq.”

While I am not a fan of al-Bashir, I think that he makes a valid point in arguing that what Colin Powell demonstrated as locations of WMD was false so this map of burned Darfur villages is false too. While I don’t believe that is the case at all, I think that the situation in Iraq and the way our government has/is handling it has affected our credibility to other nations tremendously. This is a clear-cut example of how the war in Iraq has caused us and possibly will cause us problems down the road.

In the first video as well as the second video, the president claimed that 99% of rapes were fabrications. It is hard for me to find an ounce of respect for a man like that when there is blatant proof in the horrific stories his countries women and girls are telling.

After watching these two videos I found an even greater fondness for Ann Curry and the work she is doing. She is very lady-like, but at the same time, ballsy, for lack of a better word. She is not afraid to put big questions and her opinions on the table and she’s fighting to bring justice to the people of Darfur through the media. I admire her work and personality tremendously.

(the images to the right are pictures from the article and the interview videos)