CNN covered World Refugee Day all day; Christiane Amanpour reflects

[DeepModem Mom]

CNN: The shocking truth about covering refugees
By Christiane Amanpour
CNN Chief International Correspondent
Tuesday, June 20, 2006


Christiane Amanpour in 2004 reported from Darfur where tens of thousands were in need of aid.

Editor's note: CNN's Christiane Amanpour has reported on refugee crises from many of the world's conflict zones including Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda, the Balkans and Iraq. Here are her reflections on the U.N.'s World Refugee Day.

LONDON, England (CNN) -- I suppose I am most attuned to the plight and particular circumstances of refugees, because I am one myself. When the Islamic Revolution swept Iran, my homeland, back in 1979, I left the country and came West....I think this experience has helped me in my work as I have spent the past 16 years on the road covering war, crisis, poverty and famine....In 1991, shortly after the United States and its allies declared victory in the first Gulf War, I found myself covering the Iraqi Kurds -- nearly 2 million of them, according to U.N. officials -- who fled to neighboring Turkey and Iran and became refugees. They had followed a not-so-veiled suggestion by then-President George H.W. Bush to rise up against Saddam Hussein. A violent crackdown by Saddam killed many and forced the rest to flee. They came back only when the United States and its allies created a protected no-fly zone for them in northern Iraq.

Just a few months later began the Balkan revolving-refugee crisis, ethnic cleansing and genocide that consumed the 1990s. I witnessed that war for all those years and watched in horror as millions of men, women and children walked, ran or drove away from their killers and tormentors, to end up homeless, friendless and rootless in strange countries far from home....A few years later, Kosovar refugees would tug at our heartstrings as they fled Slobodan Milosevic's murderous campaign. I still have the walking stick of an old man who had stumbled across the border to relative safety in Albania. I also remember with rage the Serbian officials who launched a propaganda campaign against CNN and me. Under intense pressure from the world about their actions, they accused us of paying the Kosovars to walk around in circles behind us for the cameras.

Perhaps the most shocking experience was in Rwanda in 1994. In the space of three short but brutal months, Hutu extremists launched a highly organized campaign to wipe out the country's Tutsis and moderate Hutu population. With clubs and machetes, they managed to bludgeon and hack to death 800,000 people as the world stood impotently by.

Then, a Tutsi exiled army came in and chased the Hutus out to neighboring Zaire. There, it was as if God took his revenge on the "genocidaires." Hundreds of thousands of them fell ill and tens of thousands died of cholera, U.N. officials say -- simply falling where they were along the road....After this, you think nothing will shock you again, but it does. The crisis in Darfur in Sudan is appalling and getting worse....And yet, on World Refugee Day, a little good news: The number of refugees around the world has dropped to a 26-year low. But the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is, in fact, caring for more people -- some 21 million, mostly because of the world's internally displaced, such as in Sudan....

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/africa/06/19/amanpour.refugeeday/index.html

[Hell Hath No Fury]

1. The disgusting thing was...

that two of the top five refugee crisis states were countries we currently occupy: Iraq and Afghanistan.

Chalk up another "success" for the Bush Administration.

[pinto]

2. Saw a little of it. Really well done.