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HBO: Your film offers a disturbing look at a crisis
many people are not aware of, or choose to
ignore. How did you come to the subject?
Paul Freedman: In retrospect, I realize I dove into this because
of shame. I was offered a job in Rwanda in
2004 to do a documentary about the
Rwandan genocide and its aftermath. I
jumped at the chance to do it. I had edited
some long form stuff that had human rights
undertones, things that really piqued my
interest in these sorts of mass atrocities that
had happened as the world stood by.
I remember being a complete bystander back
then when the genocide took place, and while
I was working on the Rwanda piece, I started
hearing whispers that something was
happening in Sudan; that another Rwanda
was brewing. So when I finished the Rwanda
piece, I looked at my wife and said, "You
know, I gotta do this." And she asked a great
question, "How are we gonna do this?" And I
said, "I don't know. But we're gonna do it."
So I plunged in headlong. Through the
generous support of friends we raised enough
money and used credit cards to get it done.
And I hope it's disturbing because people
don't realize how close this situation is to us,
and the ramifications it's going to have, long
term, on us.
HBO: After the Rwandan genocide the world
community said "never again." Yet the same
thing is happening again in Darfur right now.
Paul Freedman: The unique thing in this country is that since
Nick Kristof's work--who by the way has been
heroic since he broke the story in The New
York Times--and since people started climbing
on board and clamoring for action, there has
been a ground swell of support from students
and groups, and a number of politicians and
filmmakers who want to make "never again"
mean something.
As Samantha Power says in the film,
"Everybody wants them to be safe" meaning
the people in Darfur, "...but nobody's willing
to make them safe." And it's true. Without
the U.S., European Union and Muslim
countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia putting
pressure on the Sudanese government by
offering them a stick and not a carrot, as John
Prendergast says, by threatening them with
something, there won't be a change. It's been
years now. And each day, it's like a clock
ticking. These people just sit there while
everybody's at loggerheads. It's a tragic, tragic
situation.
HBO: Give us a snapshot of what you discovered
when you started shooting.
Paul Freedman: Because the film is so much more than just
about being in Darfur, there were things I
discovered in places like in American high
schools. It was incredible to see what happens
to young people. When they hear about the
crisis they are flabbergasted, and they say,
"How can this happen? Why would a
government do this to their own people?" That
is the correct moral response. As we grow
older and the politics melds into money and
oil, our moral response gets muddy.
In Darfur when I was shooting there, what I
saw was a vital, vibrant, important people who
were living in extreme poverty, but were quite
happy and just wanted to go home. They
have this incredible resilience and this
incredibly positive outlook on life. Many of
these people had lost everything, including
family members. But they were so ready to
extend a hand and speak with me, and to offer
a smile. They are an amazing people.
HBO: Can you give us an overview of how the
crisis began?
Paul Freedman: Well, the jumping-off point is that the regime
in Sudan right now is criminal. What has
happened in Darfur in the past four and a
half, five years, is exactly the same thing that
happened in the south of Sudan twenty one
years before that-the people in the South
rebelled because they were marginalized and
they weren't sharing in any of the country's
wealth.
Sudan is awash in oil money now, and the
southern Sudanese rebelled and when you
rebel in Sudan, whether your claims are
legitimate or not, the criminal regime in
Khartoum will come after you in a brutal,
illegal, evil way. What they do is they do not
go after the rebel soldiers themselves they go
after the rebel base. That means their
families.
The term "Janjaweed" first appeared when
they hired what were then called "Arab
militias". They paid them, trained them,
armed them and then sent them into these
villages where the rebels were believed to have
come from. They bombed them, burned their
homes, raped their women, and chased them
out. Really terrorized these people.
This is completely different than Rwanda, by
the way. And while a genocide is a genocide
the motivation behind it can be different.
Unlike the Holocaust and Rwanda where they
were killing Jews and Tutsis because they
were Jews and Tutsis, that's not really the
case in Darfur. It was a rebellion that was
put down brutally. And it just so happened
that the people who rebelled in Darfur were
from non-Arab tribes. And it just so
happened that the group that rebelled was
different than the group in power. That is
why it is called a genocide. But if there wasn't
a brutal, criminal regime desperate to stay in
power, we probably wouldn't have the
problems we have there today.
HBO: What do you hope people take away from the
film? And what can they do to help?
Paul Freedman: I came into this project with a sense of shame
and a sense of purpose. I wanted to show
people what was happening so that maybe I
could do my own part in helping to make
"never again" mean something. I've started
showing the film a bit at colleges. And I
realized that the people that were coming to
those screenings were the people who were
wearing "Save Darfur" tee shorts and "Stop
genocide" and that I was really sort of
preaching to the choir that was already there.
When HBO decided to pick up the film, I felt
like the luckiest man in the world. I knew
HBO could reach a lot more people than I
could at campuses around the country. So
my hope is that people who have no idea that
this is happening will know about it. I think
that if people understood that there has been
a legacy of failure on the part of ourselves, our
country, Western governments, hopefully it
will outrage them enough that they might pick
up the phone, or email their representative
and say, "Hey, we need to be serious about
stopping this now."
What can they do? Some of the best things
they can do are to log on to some of these
constituency websites. There are many, many
action items that they list for you to do. Most
importantly you can talk about it and you can
tell people. We need to clamor for a change in
the way we approach a criminal regime.
Instead of shaking their hands at the
negotiating table, instead of treating them in
normal diplomatic terms, we need to come up
with a new way to talk to these guys who are
murderers. And until then, I don't think we're
gonna get a lasting peace in Darfur.
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