Mia Farrow’s targeted pressure to curb the Darfur genocide “could accomplish what years of diplomacy could not,” writes Helene Cooper in the New York Times.
For two years, China has used its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council to protect the Sudanese government from UN sanctions. More than half of Sudan’s oil exports go to China, and Beijing is the Sudan’s leading arms supplier. But Mia Farrow last month started a campaign to spur Beijing into humanitarian cooperation. She called on Steven Spielberg to use his position as an artistic adviser to the Games to pressure China. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, she warned, Spielberg could “go down in history as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing Games.” Four days later, Spielberg sent a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao. Days later, China dispatched a high-ranking official to Sudan.
The turnaround is “as a classic study of how a pressure campaign, aimed to strike Beijing in a vulnerable spot at a vulnerable time, could accomplish what years of diplomacy could not,” writes Helene Cooper. China has still not agreed to sanctions. But it’s been less than two weeks since Farrow’s op-ed. And according to J. Stephen Morrison, a Sudan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, China values its image more than this oil from Sudan. “Their equity is to be seen as an ethical, rising global power,” Morrison says, “not to get in bed with every sleazy government that comes up with a little oil.” And the Olympics have been a major source of national pride. The night Beijing won the bid to host the Games, I joined about 200,000 revellers celebrating in Tiananmen Square, dancing and singing; it was the biggest gathering there since 1989.
