Luminos is the open access monograph publishing program from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high standards for selection, peer review, production, and mar- keting as those in our traditional program. www.luminosoa.org Representing Mass Violence Representing Mass Violence Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur Joachim J. Savelsberg university of california press University of California Press, one of the most distin- guished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its ac- tivities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institu- tions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2015 by The Regents of the University of California This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC-BY license. To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses. Suggested citation: Savelsberg, Joachim, J. Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur . Oakland, University of California Press, 2015. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/luminos.4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Savelsberg, Joachim J., 1951–. Representing mass violence : conflicting responses to human rights violations in Darfur / Joachim J. Savelsberg. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-520-28150-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-520-96308-5 (ebook) 1. Sudan— History—Darfur Conflict, 2003— Foreign public opinion. 2. Sudan—History—Darfur Conflict, 2003— Press coverage. 3. Sudan— History—Darfur Conflict, 2003—Mass media and the conflict. 4. Violence—Sudan—Darfur al-Janubiyah (Province)— Public opinion. 5. Violence— Press coverage— Sudan— Darfur al-Janubiyah (Province) 6. Human rights— Sudan—Darfur al-Janubiyah (Province)—Public opinion. 7. Human rights— Press coverage— Sudan—Darfur al-Janubiyah (Province) I. Title. DT159.6.D27S2548 2015 962.404 ' 3— dc23 2015017231 Manufactured in the United States of America 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48–1992 (r 2002) ( Permanence of Paper ). Dedicated to those who strive for justice, humanitarianism, and peace and to those who keep us informed— with all their constraints and all the tensions between their fields Contents List of Illustrations xi Acknowledgments xiii List of Abbreviations xvii Introduction: Questions, Theory, Darfur, Data 1 part one. Justice versus impunity 1. Setting the Stage: The Justice Cascade and Darfur 33 2. The Human Rights Field and Amnesty International 61 3. American Mobilization and the Justice Cascade 83 part two. aid versus Justice: the humanitarian field 4. The Humanitarian Aid Field and Doctors Without Borders 103 5. The Humanitarian Complex and Challenges to the Justice Cascade: The Case of Ireland 134 x | Contents part three. peace versus Justice: the diplomatic field 6. Diplomatic Representations of Mass Violence 157 7. The Diplomatic Field in National Contexts: Deviations from the Master Narrative 184 part four. mediating competing representations: the Journalistic field 8. Rules of the Journalistic Game, Autonomy, and the Habitus of Africa Correspondents 205 9. Patterns of Reporting: Fields, Countries, Ideology, and Gender 222 10. Conclusions: Fields, the Global versus the National, and Representations of Mass Violence 265 Postscript 283 Appendix A. Photo Credits and Copyright Information 287 Appendix B. Interview Guidelines 290 Appendix C. Code Book Explanations 293 Notes 304 References 316 Index 327 xi Illustrations figures 1. Map of Darfur within Sudan and neighboring countries / 2 2. International Criminal Court, The Hague / 38 3. Title page of indictment of President Omar al-Bashir / 41 4. Darfur village attacked and burned by the Janjawiid / 66 5. Darfuri refugee women and children in Chad / 66 6. Save Darfur demonstration in Washington, DC / 86 7. Save Darfur demonstration in Washington DC / 87 8. Percentage of US media documents that address killings, rapes, and displacements, compared to all other media documents / 89 9. Percentage of US media documents citing the crime frame, using the genocide label, and bridging to the Holocaust, compared to all other media documents / 90 10. Naomi Natale’s artistic rendering of genocidal violence, Washington, DC, June 2013 / 98 11. Displaced Darfuris and their “housing” / 120 12. Darfuri women and children at MSF medical service site / 121 13. Famine Memorial in Dublin, Ireland / 139 14. Percentage of Irish media documents that address killings, rapes, and displacements, compared to all other media documents / 146 xii | Illustrations 15. Percentage of Irish media documents citing the crime frame and using the genocide label, compared to all other media documents / 151 16. Ambassador Tomas Ulicny (EU) and Dr. Hassan El Turabi (Popular Congress Party) discuss peace in Khartoum / 165 17. Signing of Doha peace treaty, July 14, 2011 / 183 18. Journalist Rob Crilly / 214 19. Crilly with SLA commander Ibrahim Abdullah al “Hello” and a rebel in North Darfur / 216 20. Journalist Thomas Scheen interviewing rebels in Darfur / 217 21. Number of articles on Darfur appearing in fourteen Northern newspapers / 224 22. Press conference in press room of International Criminal Court / 235 23. Percentage of newspaper documents on Darfur using specified frames, by time period / 236 24. Percentage of newspaper documents referencing different types of suffering, by time period / 237 25. Percentage of newspaper documents citing the crime frame across periods by country / 250 26. Percentage of newspaper documents using the term genocide for Darfur, by country / 253 27. Percentage of newspaper documents referencing rape, by period and gender of journalist / 259 tables 1. Analytic dimensions of the Darfur conflict and their use by holders of different positions in the academic field / 15 2. Number of media documents (articles and opinion pieces) coded, by newspaper and country / 23 3. Representations of Darfur in conservative (C) versus liberal (L) newspapers, by period / 256 xiii Acknowledgments I owe great thanks to interviewees—Africa correspondents from eleven major European and North American newspapers, as well as Sudan and Darfur specialists at foreign ministries and with sections of Amnesty In- ternational and Doctors Without Borders in most of the eight countries I examined. They must remain unnamed as I promised anonymity. In some cases I may even have manipulated their gender attribution to in- hibit identification. Many others—scholars, administrators, librarians, and archivists— contributed valuable information. I thank my research team, a hardworking group of then–graduate students from the sociology (Abby Hagel, Ryan Moltz, Hollie Nyseth Brehm), political science (Brooke Coe, Henry Thomson), and history departments (Ed Snyder) at the University of Minnesota. They diligently coded 3,387 media articles. Reliability tests show how solidly they worked. Precious undergraduate student assistance, supported by the University of Minnesota’s Undergraduate Research Opportunity Pro- gram, was provided by Patrick Alcorn, Victoria Dutcher, Taylor Yess, and Meghan Zacher (Meghan with the support of a National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates grant). Graduate student Suzy Maves McElrath, supported by the University of Minne- sota’s Center for German and European Studies, coded foreign ministry press releases and helped coordinate the undergraduate work. Erez Gar- nai, also a graduate student in sociology at Minnesota, contributed to artwork as well as the front matter. Within the research assistant team, xiv | Acknowledgments Hollie Nyseth Brehm stood out. A (by now former) doctoral co-advisee, since fall 2014 on the sociology faculty of The Ohio State University, she helped develop the code book, coordinate the work of the coder team, and organize the data set, and contributed to data collection and analysis with great skill and seemingly unlimited energy. Collaboration with Hollie resulted in a coauthored article in the American Journal of Sociology (Vol. 121, No. 2, 2015), where we apply advanced statistical methods to some of the data presented in this book. Research underlying this book is based primarily on funding by the National Science Foundation, Law and Social Science Program (Grant No. SES-0957946). The University of Minnesota and its College of Liberal Arts granted me supplemental funding during a 2010–11 sab- batical year and a Faculty Development Leave in 2013–14. The sabbati- cal allowed me to travel across seven European countries to conduct field research and interviews, while the Institute for Social Sciences at Humboldt Universität in Berlin hosted me generously. I am indebted to Klaus Eder, the institute’s director at the time, and Hans Bertram, who provided office space and made his infrastructure available. During the Faculty Development Leave, I was a Fellow at the Käte Hamburger Center for Advanced Study in the Humanities “Law as Culture” at the Friedrich-Wilhelm Universität in Bonn. I owe great thanks to Werner Gephart, its director; to Raja Sakrani, its academic program director; to its academic and support staff; and to my fellow Fellows from five dis- ciplines, eight countries, and six continents. They shielded me against many risks of parochialism in academic work. A German version of this book is forthcoming in the Käte Hamburger Center’s series with Vittorio Klostermann Publisher, Frankfurt am Main. Finally, the Rock- efeller Foundation funded a 2010 collaborative fellowship, with John Hagan and Jens Meierhenrich, and a 2012 conference, Representations of Darfur, that our trio organized at its Bellagio Center. The confer- ence allowed us to bring together scholars, journalists, Sudanese oppo- sition activist-journalists, ICC staff, and leading diplomats from the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. I presented parts of this work at numerous places, including an- nual meetings of the American Sociological Association; the Law & Society Association; the American Society of Criminology; the Re- search Council for the Sociology of Law at its 2013 Toulouse meetings; the 2013 Legal Frames of Memory conference in Warsaw; the 2012 Rockefeller Bellagio conference; the 2013 conference “The Memory of Trauma: After the Holocaust and an Era of Genocides,” organized Acknowledgments | xv by the Humanities Institute and the Department for Jewish Studies at the University of California, Davis; the 2013 Representations of Geno- cide conference, which I coorganized with Alejandro Baer, Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota; workshops in the sociology departments of Johannes- Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, and the University of Minnesota; the Institute for Diaspora and Genocide Research at the Ruhr Universität Bochum; All Souls College and the Institute of Criminology at Oxford University; a Punishment & Society conference at the University of Edinburgh; the Käte Hamburger Cen- ter for Advanced Study in the Humanities “Law as Culture” in Bonn; and the Käte Hamburger Centre for Global Cooperation Research in Duisburg. Everywhere I received deserved critiques and helpful sugges- tions. My expression of gratitude for inspiration or hospitality has to be selective, but I will at least mention Martin Albrow, Alejandro Baer, Marta Bucholc, Mirhan Dabag, Nina Dethloff, Noemi Gal-Or, David Garland, Werner Gephart (again), John Hagan, Marina Hennig, Mat- thias Herdegen, Philipp Kuntz, Ian Loader, Jens Meierhenrich, Mark Osiel, Leigh Payne, Devin Pendas, Kristin Platt, Birgit Schwelling, Kathryn Sikkink, Richard Sparks, Natan Sznaider, Annette Weber, and Diane Wolf. A number of colleagues and friends read all or part of the manuscript: Shai Dromi, Erez Garnai, Shannon Golden, Mat- thias Herdegen, Ryan D. King, Matthias Revers, Rebecca Savelsberg, and Philip Smith. Anonymous reviewers for the University of Califor- nia Press read the prospectus as well as the manuscript; each provided helpful suggestions. My profound thanks go to all of them and to oth- ers who contributed in manifold ways. Any remaining mistakes, of course, are mine. At Minnesota, I thank Jim Parente, who, as Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and, jointly with Michal Kobialka, as Associate Dean for Faculty, supported several of the initiatives mentioned above. I was honored when Dean Parente offered me, in 2013, the Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair, dedicated to research and service in the name of human rights. I gratefully accepted, and work on judicial and legislative struggles over the history of the Armenian genocide is under way. My gratitude goes to the Ohanessian Fund and family. At the University of California Press, Maura Roessner and her team, including Glynnis Koike, Elena McAnespie, Jessica Moll, and Jack Young, helped with enthusiasm and great professionalism. Steven B. Baker did outstanding work as copyeditor. xvi | Acknowledgments Finally, as always, Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg accompanied me through the process of researching and writing. I can never count the conversations, moments of frank critique, and precious advice that ac- cumulate along the way. The last year of writing was accompanied by new life, by saved life, and by death among those closest to us. Mil- lions of distant lives, saved and destroyed, of those who suffer from the greatest human rights violations, unnamed and unknown to us and the readers, and the struggle over their acknowledgment and representation are what this book is about. xvii Abbreviations ABF American Bar Foundation ADS Atrocities Documentation Survey AEC Assessment and Evaluation Commission AI-IS Amnesty International— International Secretariat AI-USA Amnesty International— USA section AJWS American Jewish World Service ASC American Society of Criminology AU African Union AUHIP African Union High Level Implementation Panel for Sudan CARE Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere CBC Congressional Black Caucus CFSP Common Foreign and Security Policy CLG Center on Law and Globalization CPA Comprehensive Peace Agreement CSI Christian Solidarity International DFA Department of Foreign Affairs DPA Deutsche Presse-Agentur EPD Evangelischer Pressedienst FAZ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung FCO Foreign and Commonwealth Office xviii | Abbreviations FDP Free Democratic Party FIDH Fédération Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l’Homme GNI Gross National Income GoNU Government of National Unity for Sudan HRW Human Rights Watch IAI International African Institute ICID International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross ICTJ International Center for Transitional Justice ICTR International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ICTY International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia IDP internally displaced person IGAD Intergovernmental Authority for Development IMT International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg) INGO international nongovernmental organization IRB Institutional Review Board JEM Justice and Equality Movement MFA Ministry of Foreign Affairs MSF Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) NCP National Congress Party NGO nongovernmental organization NPWJ No Peace Without Justice NYT New York Times Oxfam Oxford Committee for Famine Relief PAA Population Association of America PDF Popular Defense Forces RAS Royal African Society REU Research Experiences for Undergraduates RTE Radió Teilifís Éireann (Ireland) R2P Responsibility to Protect SAF Sudanese Armed Forces SCSL Special Court for Sierra Leone SLA Sudan Liberation Army SLM/A Sudan Liberation Movement/Army SOAS School of Oriental and African Studies Abbreviations | xix SPLA Sudan People’s Liberation Army SSRC Social Sciences Research Council SZ Süddeutsche Zeitung TAN transnational advocacy network UNAMID African Union–United Nations hybrid operation in Darfur UNAMIS United Nations Advance Mission in Sudan UNOCHA United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs UNSC United Nations Security Council USHMM United States Holocaust Memorial Museum WFP World Food Program WSJ Wall Street Journal