Dealing With Africa’s Suffering

Terry George’s article about apathy over Africa’s suffering (Commentary, Jan. 16) could not have been more appropriate. The extensive press coverage of the tsunami has helped generate well-deserved sympathy and financial aid for the victims. It is a heartening reminder of how Americans rise to support fellow humans in distress, especially from cataclysmic natural disasters.

Surely the press and the administration can do a better job, however, of focusing attention on the ongoing, man-made tragedy in Sudan.

There, more than 1 million impoverished refugees were forced to flee their homes. Women and girls continue to be raped daily as villages are pillaged. Thousands of black Sudanese have been murdered so far by their nonblack fellow Muslims.

Perhaps regular press coverage of the details of this ethnic cleansing would help to stop the genocide before it’s too late.

Sue Miller

Santa Monica

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Apathy? Years after apartheid and corrupt dictatorships, Africa, for the most part, is still an abject, dysfunctional mess -- and it appears to be getting worse. Yet every year and without fail, millions upon millions of public and private dollars flow into Africa to combat AIDS, feed the hungry, build infrastructure, etc.

But none of those dollars will stop the endless parade of corrupt dictatorships that siphon off many of those dollars, adults who are in abject poverty yet still having multiple births, and Africans’ seeming inability to modernize or to make use of the continent’s vast resources.

George also tends to blame racism as a main reason for the West’s apathy, but overlooks why black Africans are the biggest threat to fellow black Africans. Recent history will just have to look at Hutus and Tutsis, Sudan, Congo and Uganda, among many others, as examples of black Africans continually laying waste to each other.

Even with all this, the West will continue to pour in financial aid, give resources and physically be there to help Africans -- year after year after year. Apathy? My foot!

Greg Belluomini

Hawthorne