Where is the indignation?
Dallas Morning News : Gang rapes. Forced prostitution. Pedophilia. A French mechanic bribing starving pre-teen girls into having sex in exchange for food or a few dollars to feed their families.
There's nothing ambiguous about these repugnant crimes, the latter of which was reported in a recent ABC News' "20/20" program that revealed computer-stored pictures of Didier Bourguet, a senior U.N. official there, having sex with hundreds of young girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Bourguet's lawyer says his client's Internet pedophile ring involved other U.N. officials.
In the past year, about 50 peacekeeping soldiers and civilians have been implicated in at least 150 instances of sexual exploitation of women and girls in Congo. Similar charges have dogged the U.N. operations in East Timor and Kosovo.
Where is the international indignation that met the Abu Ghraib scandal? Is the world's conscience pricked only when Americans are abusing the powerless?