MuseumDESCRIPTION:
News anchor for NBC’s Today Show, Ann Curry, recently returned from her second trip to the Chad-Sudan border. She speaks with Jerry Fowler about her trip to the region, the deteriorating situation and the brave women she met there. Ann also highlights the importance of public response, noting that the more emails and feedback a story receives and the more the public cares about a story such as Darfur, the more likely the outlet is to continue covering the region.
TRANSCRIPT:
JERRY FOWLER: My guest today is award winning journalist, Ann Curry. She is the News Anchor of NBC’s Today Show and just returned from her second visit to the Chad-Sudan border. Ann, welcome to the program.
ANN CURRY: Hi Jerry, nice to speak to you.
JERRY FOWLER: You just came back from your second visit to the Chad-Sudan border; your first one was back in March, and before we get to this trip, I was just wondering what caused you to go to Chad in the first place?
ANN CURRY: For years now, I have been watching this horror unfold in the Darfur region from afar and have sought to go into Darfur directly to cover what smelled and looked and struck me—having covered Kosovo and having worried about genocide in other places, Rwanda, and other places—it just seemed to be genocide happening all over again, and so, I have tried to get into and get a visa into Darfur for years, but have been denied by the Sudanese government, so finally I decided to perhaps go in through a different route, and going in through Chad, there were different opportunities to cross the border into Darfur—not the way I wanted to do it, but certainly the only way that was possible—to sort of bring to light what was happening. I think that people in my position have an obligation to bear witness. We have an obligation to let others bear witness whenever there is this kind of disaster. I am someone who has always felt deeply about this kind, well the racist kind nature of this kind of killing, this kind of suffering; it is just impossible for me to sit by.
JERRY FOWLER: How difficult was it, obviously with covering the story, as you say, the Sudanese government restricts access to Darfur itself often, but how difficult was it for you to convince NBC that this was something that you should do?
ANN CURRY: It is always difficult to ask a major news organization to spend a whole lot of money for a story that may or may not be successful. There was no guarantee the first time I went over that I was going to be able to get a story, and to ask NBC to commit a tremendous amount of money to send us all the way over there is always difficult. Also, the world’s attention, now, it seems to be consumed by other stories, obviously Iraq is the biggest one and having covered wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and understanding where we are, to some degree, as a nation and our focus there, I wondered whether NBC would green light this project, but to its credit, it did, not once, but now twice this year, and in fact, had I been able to get a visa for Sudan earlier, I would have been able to go sooner than I did. NBC has been, actually, really terrific about it, and I am glad that they have heard my arguments and have responded to them, and I do not expect that this will be the last time that I will be able to go. Look, I do not enjoy going to places like this; it is very, very, very hard. Not only to work, but I do not like putting my team at risk. It is very, very stressful.
JERRY FOWLER: You have a family too as well.
ANN CURRY: I do, but so does everyone else, and it is even more frightening to me to have someone I am leading into that region to have a family and my being the reason that they are at risk, so all of those things play into this, but it is frightening for NBC as well. They have their own people in so many places across the globe where they are at risk, but there is a recognition that this kind of thing cannot stand. I think that we as a news organization, and actually most news organizations, did not do an adequate job in bringing to light what was happening in Bosnia, certainly not in Rwanda, and that was why I argued for our going to Kosovo, and why I was heard when I argued for going to Kosovo in the way that we did, and why I think I was heard in my arguments about this place of great suffering in the heart of Africa. I think that what really has been wonderful is that people are now understanding Darfur. In this year, Americans have gone from not knowing what Darfur was to at least understanding that if you say the word “Darfur,” that some great tragedy was happening there. You mention the word “Darfur,” and most everyone will say, “Oh yes, oh no, what is happening there is terrible,” and most people know about Darfur. That is what happened this year. Now the question is whether in 2007 America and the world will be able to do something about Darfur, do something now not just about Darfur, but about Chad because it is now bleeding across the border in the same way in Chad as it was in Darfur.
JERRY FOWLER: In terms of people knowing about it, one thing that I noticed on the blog that the Nightly News has where you did some entries from Chad, there were a lot of comments from the public thanking you for going and saying how important it was. Is NBC getting the sense that there is a public that cares about this story?
ANN CURRY: I think because of the response, which has been overwhelming, overwhelming, there is a growing sense that they were right in making this decision. I am telling you this all helps. When I do stories that I care so much about, I am always so heartened when people respond in this way; not because of me, because it is not about that. It is about enabling this coverage again, and again, and again. People, Americans have no idea how powerful they are. When they respond in this way with their emails—until now it has only been through watching it, through ratings that we have been able to gauge whether America cares—but when people email, even if the numbers are not enormous, then at least it is another way for us to gauge that America does care about this, and I will you, it has not been unheard. These emails have resonated all the way up to the highest echelon of NBC News, and I know the next time I go and say, “Look, it is time again,” I know I will be heard much more clearly because of the response of the American people.
JERRY FOWLER: That is good to hear. Let us turn to the situation on the ground. How did things seem different to you on this trip from your first trip?
ANN CURRY: No question things are more tense, no question. There are more men with guns running around along the border between Chad and Sudan. Also, no question, there was just no thinking of our crossing the border in any of the usual ways because it was so dangerous. We were at one point in Goz Beida —about 75 miles from the border, in Chad—and the Chadian military had taken up defensive positions, the Janjaweed—we were told—know we were there, the boys in the camps were in jeopardy of being stolen by rebel groups to join their forces, and the fighting, the burning of villages was happening just within 45 minutes of where we were; not deeper in towards the border, but actually just north of where we were. Deep into Chad now, there has been the systematic burning of village after village as there was in Darfur, and the war in Darfur is now in Chad, and it is a horror, it is a horror. People are not getting fed, people who had had a life before, who had given shelter to the Darfurians, given them their food and given them homes and shelter, taken care of their children, are now themselves victims, and the children and the people who were victims once in Darfur are victimized a second time. The camps now are being run in Chad, for Darfurians, but there are no camps that are being run for the Chadians, and it is just a horror today. Women are being systematically raped. Do you know that they are marked? That they are deliberately marked so that they are not marriageable? A woman told us that she was asked which tribe she belonged to, and when she said that she was a member of this African tribe—the Dado tribe which has land—she was raped.
JERRY FOWLER: This was a Chadian woman?
ANN CURRY: This was a Chadian woman, and this is what is happening now. It is that marking, that systematic kind of violence that prevents women from being married. Maybe some men will want her because she was a very pretty 17 year old woman and so she probably would be married someday, but she is ostracized by her own people, except for her aunts and her cousins, the women who were standing with her. Imagine what rape once was in America. That is what it is among these African tribes. It is such a shame that the women do not even speak about it to each other. People have asked me, “Oh, is there treatment? Are they able to have some type of psychological treatment?” This is a question that makes a lot of sense in America but makes absolutely no sense in these areas where people cannot even speak to each other about it; much less get some kind of trauma counseling. It is a horror, it is a horror what these people are going through.
JERRY FOWLER: One of the things that we have seen in Darfur is that this use of rape because of its consequences is really one of the techniques to destroy the group. It is breaking down the group by doing that.
ANN CURRY: There is no question, having seen it both my travel companion, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, and I have independently, after conducting these interviews with these rape victims who were very bold and brave to speak to us about this, and for whom we actually became quite, certainly not trained therapist, but certainly were an ear for women who had not been able to speak about these crimes against them. We both independently concluded that this was systematic and deliberate. It is a deliberate form of attacking the heart of these people to attack these women and to cause them to be so shamed that they might not even tell their own husbands so as to stay married.
JERRY FOWLER: One of the things that is posted on the NBC web site that is really haunting is a video of Sudanese—actually I do not know if they were Sudanese or Chadian; perhaps you can tell me—of women singing a song about being raped. How did that come about?
ANN CURRY: These women had gathered together to speak to us because they knew the female interpreter, and they were huddled in a tent, and I introduced myself as a woman and a wife and a mother of children and that I was honored to be in their company, and that I am so sorry that they had all been attacked, all of these women in this room, as young as they were and as old as they were. They were tremendously sad; they did not have to say anything for us to know the sadness; it was all in their eyes. They were just sitting there and my producer, Antoine SanFuentes, an NBC News producer, suggested that perhaps if there was something that they might do; he himself was a musician so he asked if they might sing, and they said, “No, no, we are too sad to sing.” And so he said, “Is there perhaps a song of sadness that you would be willing to sing?” And they said that the only thing they could sing was a song about the Janjaweed. After some discussion amongst themselves, they agreed to sing the song, and the song was about how their men were not able to protect them and how the Janjaweed had come and there was nothing but bows and arrows to protect them from these Arab militias, and the song directly named Al Bashir, the President of Sudan in saying to him that though they are trying to get rid of him, it does not matter if they are Darfurians or Chadians, that he will attack us and that he is trying to exterminate us, and this is what they are singing, and we did not know what they were singing as they were singing this song, and then as these women who were singing this song who could barely ever cry except privately, ever talk about the rape that they had endured amongst themselves, suddenly these stoic people, these women who pride themselves, and people who pride themselves in their stoicism, in their strength, suddenly could not stop the tears, and as they sang they started to cry. We had to afterwards let them know that there was no shame in this, and we wanted to give them this voice, we wanted to let them be heard, and so we put this in its entirety on our website while it could not be in its entirety on our Today Show or NBC Nightly News pieces, we wanted it to be heard somewhere, so were grateful that the Internet allowed this opportunity. It is haunting because it is so honest, so brutally honest, and so helpless as well.
JERRY FOWLER: Will you be going back to Chad?
ANN CURRY: I cannot imagine not continuing to try to get back into this region; whether it is Darfur or whether it is Chad, to speak about these African tribes who are in danger of being vanished. These are traditional tribal people who live on the land, who farm zorghum and peanuts and millet, who have such a bounty—they store their bounty in these huge jars in these storage bins—who play and whose women are in the field and whose men are in the fields, whose villages have grown large over time, and who were able to sustain themselves and who understood their lives as being neighbors to these Arab herdsmen, cattlemen, and who now, because of this need for territory, this need stop a rebel movement where my understanding is one means to spark this by Sudan in this need to drive these people from their territory. We understand from comments made yesterday from the Sudanese president Al Bashir that there is oil under these Darfurian lands which I did not know, but for whatever reason, these African people are being driven from their lands that they have lived on for centuries, and they are being driven under the flag of racism. This is the thing about genocide; it is always sparked by some other thing, sparked by political aims or a need for property or for land, and what drives it, what fuels it, is this ugly, ugly racism, this hate of another kind of people that allows this kind of killing; it green lights it and it fuels the fires of this. In the Darfur-Chad region it is fire; they are burning villages and people off of their land. They are threatening a way of life, they are threatening the people, and they are killing people. I feel, having now only been there twice, but having been there enough to be haunted now, I feel as though I might be witnessing the vanishing of a people’s way of life, a people who will now go into, whose survivors will forget who they once were because they cannot be connected anymore to their land.
JERRY FOWLER: I have been talking to Ann Curry of NBC’s Today Show. Ann, thanks so much for taking the time to be with us.
ANN CURRY: It is a pleasure to speak to you.
