Major Papers Get Sudan Slavery Story Wrong

By: Nat Hentoff Commentary

For more than five years, I have been writing on -- and interviewing witnesses to -- chattel slavery in Sudan. Militias from the National Islamic Front government in the north raid villages of black animists and Christians in the south, abducting the women and children and often killing the men. The women and girls become house slaves and concubines; the boys are forced into Muslim schools.

It took a long time for the American press to take notice, but eventually the grim news spread due to the persistent efforts of the Boston-based American Anti-Slavery Group, members of Congress, and schoolchildren around the nation -- starting in Denver -- who raised money to buy back slaves.

I have interviewed redeemed slaves living here; have reports from black Sudanese bishops; and have checked with American journalists who witnessed slave redemptions, as well as with Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-Va., who also have been in Sudan.

In his April 23 column in The New York Times, Nicholas D. Kristof wrote, "Unfortunately, there is evidence that many of these redemptions are the result of trickery, with false slave traders selling make-believe slaves many times over." That's all Kristof wrote on this point. He presented no evidence. If I were still teaching journalism classes, I would use this as the denotative definition of irresponsible reporting. As of this writing, the Times has declined to print letters specifically challenging Kristof's unsubstantiated charge.

A much more egregious illustration of reckless journalism was a Page One story in the Feb. 26 issue of The Washington Post by Karl Vick, a correspondent in Nairobi, Kenya. The headline: "Ripping Off Slave 'Redeemers.'" In the story, Vick charged that "buying the freedom of Sudanese slaves" abounds in corruption, and "in some cases ... the slaves were ... people gathered locally and instructed to pretend they were returning from bondage." Redeemers and observers who do not understand the local language were tricked, according to Vick.

John Eibner of Christian Solidarity International (CSI) -- the organizer of the redemptions, whose reports over the years I have checked and never found inaccurate -- said that Vick himself did not witness any slave redemptions, did not interview any liberated slaves, and, "after many months of research, failed to find, identify, and produce a single false slave out of the 60,000-plus slaves redeemed by [CSI]." Eibner also said -- regarding allegations that complicit translators did not tell "fake" slaves the specifics of what Western observers were actually asking -- Dateline NBC and CBS News, when each reported from Sudan, had their translations checked for accuracy.

And Dinka- and Arabic-speaking Bona Malwal of Oxford University, a witness to slave redemptions, has said he did not observe any deceptive translations. Also, I have a large folder of transcribed interviews with freed slaves that have been checked independently.

One columnist, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Tony Norman, took The Washington Post story at face value and wrote a March 1 column, headlined "Turning a Profit on the Price of Freedom," that came to the conclusion, "The Sudanese slave scam is an example of how cynicism distorts even missions of mercy." But, in an April 16 column, "Student's Journey to Sudan Sheds Light on Slavery," Norman -- having interviewed an eyewitness to redemptions who had read Vick's accusations before going to Sudan and now rejects them -- acknowledged: This "hatchet job ... has been particularly galling to me because I wrote a column critical of CSI's slave-redemption efforts in Sudan based on the Post's Feb. 26 story. If ever there was a column I wish I could retract, it's that one."

Joe Madison, a former official of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a syndicated radio talk-show host, and the national director of the Sudan Campaign, said: "I personally witnessed CSI redeeming slaves, and conducted interviews with ... people who have been enslaved. It is very difficult to fake open wounds, mangled limbs, and starvation. How can anyone stage something this atrocious?" And, Madison added, "I find it curious that, after interviewing me for more than four hours, the reporter [Vick] chose to exclude any of the facts" Madison shared with him for his story.

Another eyewitness, the Rev. Gerald E. Bell of the Black Ministerial Alliance in Boston, said: "It is absolutely deplorable that any newspaper would allow this type of reporting at the expense of such suffering. Anyone can travel to southern Sudan to learn the real facts." But the Post's Vick, Bell noted, "simply chose not to do so."

CSI's Eibner and the American Anti-Slavery Group have tried, so far unavailingly, to get space in the Post to counter its story. On May 15, however, CBS' 60 Minutes II at least presented both sides in a Dan Rather report, albeit incomplete and slanted toward "fake" slave redemptions.

All of us in this business ought to keep in mind the question of who watches us watchers.