A Model Citizen

Watching Naomi Campbell questioned in the Special Court for Sierra Leone this morning was fascinating. It was an amazing juxtaposition, the super-model at the super-court. She looked truly out of place. It is hard to imagine a more serious, less frivolous, thing than a war crimes trial - Ms Campbell (and her profession) is of course the exact opposite of this. The popular idea of the courtroom as a dramatic place is not a difficult thing to dispel, 10 minutes in a real court will do, and the diligent thoroughness of analytic questioning from legal professionals clashes violently with the way the entertainment industry likes it's questions - sensational, chatty and on message for whatever they are pushing you to buy this week. It's also hard not to see the parallels between her and the other beautiful, glittering, utterly useless objects at the centre of this trial - the blood diamonds. The juxtaposition of these dazzling rocks with the awful brutality they fuelled, the terrible atrocities that the prosecutors who called Campbell are now trying to hold Taylor accountable for, is every bit as stark.

Of course there is one difference between the rocks and the model - It can't testify to it's activities, whereas she just didn't want to. Moreover she didn't seem to see why it was important, which is incredible. Charles Taylor was brutal even by the standards of African warlords and his greedy actions encouraged some of the worst bloodshed that Africa has ever seen. Here's a quick list... First Liberian Civil war - 200,000 dead, Sierra Leone Civil War - 50,000 dead, Second Liberian Civil War - 150,000 dead, 1,000,000 displaced, countless more mutilated, raped, enslaved, traumatised. I'm not going to list the specific offences, but 'sadistic' doesn't nearly cover it. So, Naomi Campbell's response to a request for her help in convicting Taylor? Refusal to testify voluntarily (necessitating a subpoena), non-co-operation with the prosecution, and when asked if she was nervous (because she had been impatiently answering questions before the prosecutor was finished talking) her response was cold callous and indifferent. 'No, well, I didn't really want to be here. I was made to be here,' she answered. 'So, obviously I'm just like wanting to get this over with and get on with my life. This is a big inconvenience for me.'.

Of course no one can be compelled to care about something, and attempts to do so in the past have not gone well. Perhaps it is too much to ask people to care about this case in particular - because I suspect many would say, in Campbell's words, 'I don't know anything about Charles Taylor. Never heard of him before, never heard of the country Liberia before. I never heard of the term 'blood diamonds' before.'. That said, perhaps the biggest irony of this affair is that now many more people will have heard of Liberia, and Charles Taylor. I'm sure Naomi Campbell considers herself a friend of Africa (she certainly considers herself a friend of Nelson Mandela!) for all her 'charity' work. This is the first time that she has ever been called upon to really sacrifice for the continent. I don't for a moment deny that testifying is potentially dangerous, earlier in the trial the chief prosecutor alleged that a key insider witness who testified against Taylor went into hiding after being threatened. But Ms Campbell has definitely tried as hard as possible not to help, if you believe the prosecutor she could still have said more if she had chosen to. This is perhaps defensible, you can't command courage either, but the callous indifference is probably only more offensive if it was only done out of guilt and shame.