Genocide in Serbia, tragedy in Sudan?

Radovan Karadzic, the Serbian war-criminal (right), was arrested yesterday, and will be charged with genocide of the Bosnian people, including the infamous murder of 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995. He had been hunted for ten years.

On July 15 this year, Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir (left), was charged, like Karadzic, with genocide and war crimes. In his watch, since 1989, there has been a campaign against the residents of Darfur, which appears to have assumed the proportions of genocide since 2003, when a slaughter of approximately 35,000 Darfurians was initiated, with a concomitant mass rape of females of all ages.

How is it that it takes three years to begin the hunt of a European genocidal maniac, but at least five years to indict an African one?

In Virus X, evolutionary biologist Frank Ryan quotes epidemiologist Joel Breman on diseases that emerge from Africa:

An African epidemic might be compared to a giant tree falling in the forest. Nobody notices it has fallen. When the first white person dies, the epidemic begins.

This might explain why the situation in Zimbabwe, whereby Robert Mugabe is making crumbs of the breadbasket of Africa, is in the news every day. Also, Chinese involvement in Sudan, highlighted by George Clooney in 2006 (right), may be turning the heads of newpaper chiefs keen to stay on the right side of the world's most prominent emerging economy.

It would be good to see China help progress the case against al-Bashir, if only to dispel the suspicions that it is playing the old colonial game, in several African countries, of letting opposing sides slog it out then making a deal with the weakened victor. If China were to show willing, then this jaded old blogger might think about telling friends to have a look at the Olympics.