DON CHEADLE - CHEADLE BLASTS WORLD'S DISREGARD FOR AFRICA

OSCAR nominee DON CHEADLE has hit out at the "disgraceful" attitude of western governments in turning a blind eye to ongoing atrocities in Africa.

Cheadle, who is up for the Best Actor trophy for this performance in HOTEL RWANDA at Sunday's (27FEB05) ACADEMY AWARDS ceremony, hopes his latest film will encourage westerners to sit up and take notice of the humanitarian crises that continue to plague the continent.

He says, "Whenever it comes to Africa, it's always tricky. Worse than tricky - it's disgraceful. It seems one single African life really doesn't mean anything. Hundreds and thousands of lives have to be lost before people start talking about it.

"Much more than that has to happen before people do anything about it. We sit here today and Darfur (Sudan) is raging out of control - 300,000 people killed, two million displaced.

"In the Congo, four million were killed, two million were displaced. We're just talking about it. No one is doing anything substantial about it.

"It's hard to argue that the West doesn't view African life as cheap and irrelevant."

Cheadle plays real-life hero PAUL RUSESABAGINA in HOTEL RWANDA, a hotel manager who saved more than 1,200 refugees in Rwanda in 1994 when genocide went practically unnoticed by the rest of the world.