Spinning for Dictators on American Campuses

Fresh off the news that Sudan's Omar al-Bashir has been named the world's worst dictator by Parade Magazine comes word that his regime's p.r. spin on American college campuses is falling flat.

Earlier this month Sudan’s ambassador to the US, Khidir Haroun Ahmed, showed up at Stanford to clean up the Bashir regime's reputation. He joined a panel sponsored by a group called the  the Muslim Students Awareness Network along with other speakers trying to do massive spin control on the first genocide of the 21st century. The Stanford Daily reports:

He again assured the audience that “the government has pursued no policy of genocide” and added that the “government is determined to resolve this conflict peacefully and using negotiations.”

...Hodari Abdul-Ali, also a member of the [Give Peace a Chance] coalition who has been to Sudan four times, labeled the conflict in Darfur a “problem between nomadic tribesmen and farmers” and discounted claims that slavery exists in Sudan, stating that the current “peace agreement in Sudan is unprecedented.”

The two million Sudanese killed - including 200,000 in the last year in Darfur - could not be reached for comment. Nor were Sudanese survivors of slavery - like Francis Bok and Simon Deng - invited to respond to Abdul-Ali's claims. But Stanford students weren't having any of the "no genocide and no slavery" spin:

Diana Clough, a sophomore, said she was “pretty shocked that they tried to defend the Sudanese government’s actions,” and expressed particular concern that the parallel between Darfur and Iraq was only brought up to appeal to the many students who oppose the war in Iraq.

In response to the panel, students Eric Kramon and Lija McHugh published an op-ed in the Stanford paper, noting:

[The event] was, at best, the presentation of an unfounded, highly one-sided approach to the issue and, at worst, the recitation of rhetoric produced by the Sudanese central government’s propaganda machine.

Seems as if the students are on to Bashir's game. If the regime is tone-deaf enough to continue these sorts of campus events, it will be an important opportunity for American students to send a message that they won't be silent on genocide.

University students in Khartoum may be intimidated into silence, but American students are free to hold genocidal dictators accountable.

UPDATE: A Stanford student emails with more details: A table outside the lecture hall was stacked with tourist pamphlets(!) on Sudan and newspaper clips titled "Sudan: Target of International Intrigue." Inside the hall, the presentation featured an auto-repeat slideshow of smiling childen, women carrying food, students with schoolbooks, and happy villagers. Speakers offered various scapegoat conspiracy theories for the Darfur conflict: an American plot to plunder Sudan, Israeli complicity with rebels, and "outside forces" practicing "universal deceit" against the Khartoum regime.