Regime Watch: Beijing

It’s often easy to dismiss celebrities and their causes, think movie stars discussing carbon footprints…just before they hop on the private jet to Cannes or Aspen.

But Mia Farrow’s advocacy for the victims of the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan seems the real deal…passionate, articulate and relentless.

It was Ms. Farrow who dubbed the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing as the “Genocide Olympics” in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, eloquently laying out Beijing’s economic and political complicity in the mass-slaughter.

On Saturday, the Los Angeles Times reported on Farrow’s one-woman protest during Olympic torch ceremonies in Hong Kong:

Actress Mia Farrow urged Beijing today to help stop the killings in Sudan’s western Darfur region, staging a peaceful, one-woman protest on the sidelines of the Hong Kong leg of the Olympic torch relay.

The 63-year-old actress held aloft her own torch, which she said honored victims of genocide, near Hong Kong’s government headquarters — away from the Olympic torch route.

“As the games approach, China has the opportunity to change the course of history,” she said.

Sad, but true. Last May, President Bush cut off certain government-run companies involved in the Sudan oil business, and several individuals suspected in involvement in the slaughter in Darfur from the U.S. banking system. But the fact is that the regime in Khartoum doesn’t really need the U.S. banking system as long as it has the economic backing of Beijing. From the Heritage Foundation’s Peter Brookes in 2007:

Over the last decade, Beijing’s energy firms have invested between $3 billion and $10 billion in the Sudanese energy sector, stuffing at least $250 million a year into Khartoum’s pockets.

The hundreds of millions of dollars from Beijing help prop up Khartoum’s arsenal, making the genocide all the more efficient. Brookes continues:

Beijing also helps arm Khartoum. As a result of its energy profits, Sudan has doubled its defense budget in recent years, spending 60 percent to 80 percent of its oil revenue on weapons - arms mostly made in China.

Moreover, with Chinese assistance, the Sudanese government may have built a number of weapons factories - further frustrating any efforts at a reasonably air-tight arms embargo.

So the power to actually and substantially impact an ongoing genocide lays with a regime that has no interest in exercising that power in any positive way.

The Times piece continues about Farrow:

Farrow, who has dubbed the Beijing games the “genocide Olympics,” said she has lobbied Chinese officials in New York on Darfur.

Recalling one meeting, she said one Chinese official asked her why activists didn’t highlight Beijing’s humanitarian work in Darfur.

Farrow said she replied, “Here in America, when something’s wrong with our car and we take it to the mechanic, we don’t say what’s right with our car. We say what’s wrong with our car.”

She added, “Maybe I’m not the most tactful person … but I’m not a liar.”

Don’t sweat it, Ms. Farrow, this is genocide we’re talking about here and you’re doing great. Tact is for the diplomats who sip cocktails with mass-murderers, and we’ll leave the lying to the genocide enablers in Beijing.

For more on Darfur, see dreamfordarfur.org