- The government of Sudan today is accused of "crimes against humanity" by human rights groups, following its "scorched-earth campaign" in Darfur. A new report documents "brutal raids" against several ethnic groups in Darfur, sustaining UN warnings of ethnic cleansing and possible genocide preparations.
One week after high UN officials expressed their grave concern over "ethnic cleansing in Sudan," the New York-based group Human Rights Watch today published a report on the Darfur war, in which government troops and their local allied militias are accused of grave atrocities. The group says the Sudanese government "is complicit in crimes against humanity" committed by the militias it backs in Darfur.
- In a scorched-earth campaign, government forces and Arab militias are killing, raping and looting African civilians that share the same ethnicities as rebel forces in this western region of Sudan, Human Rights Watch warned today. The report describes a government strategy of forced displacement targeting civilians of the non-Arab ethnic communities from which the two main rebel groups - the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) - are mainly drawn.
The group had found that pro-government armed forces are indiscriminately bombing civilians, while both government forces and militias are systematically destroying villages and conducting brutal raids against the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa peoples.
- The Sudanese military and government-backed militias are committing massive human rights violations daily in the western region of Darfur, commented Georgette Gagnon of Human Rights Watch. "The government's campaign of terror has already forcibly displaced one million innocent civilians, and the numbers are increasing by the day," she added.
The Khartoum government was said to have recruited and armed over 20,000 militiamen of so-called "Arab descent" and operate jointly with these militias, known as Janjaweed, in attacks on civilians from the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa peoples. Most of the one million displaced rural Darfurians have fled into towns and camps, where they, according to the group, "continue to be murdered, raped and looted by the militias."
Although the so-called "Arab" and "African" communities in Darfur for decades have intermittently clashed over land and scarce resources, the current conflict began 14 months ago when two new rebel groups emerged. The SLM/A and the JEM demanded that the Sudanese government stop arming the "Arab groups" in Darfur and address longstanding grievances over underdevelopment in the region.
In response, the government launched a massive bombing campaign which, combined with the raids of the marauding militias, have forced more than 800,000 people from their homes and sent an additional 110,000 people into neighbouring Chad.
In a scorched-earth campaign, government forces and militias are said to have "killed several thousand Fur, Zaghawa and Masaalit civilians, routinely raped women and girls, abducted children, and looted tens of thousands of head of cattle and other property." In many areas of Darfur, they also are said to have "deliberately burned hundreds of villages and destroyed water sources and other infrastructure, making it much harder for the former residents to return."
- The militias are not only killing individuals, they are decimating the livelihoods of tens of thousands of families, Ms Gagnon said. "The people being targeted are the farmers of the region, and unless these abuses are stopped and people receive humanitarian relief, we could see famine in a few months' time," she added.
The report further describes how government forces "allow the Janjaweed to operate with full impunity." Government forces were failing to protect civilians, "even when these unarmed people have appealed to the military and police forces, warning that their villages were about to be attacked. Government forces and Janjaweed have also obstructed the flight of civilians escaping to Chad," the report says.
- The Khartoum government has tried to repress this rebellion with lightning speed in hope that the international community wouldn't have time to mobilise and press the government to halt its devastation of Darfur, added Ms Gagnon. "But the Sudanese government will still have to answer for crimes against humanity that cannot be ignored," she holds.
The Human Rights Watch report adds to earlier concerns expressed by UN officials and by exiled Darfurian political activists, indicating genocide might be in preparation in the area. Last week, eight UN human rights experts issued a statement saying they were "gravely concerned" by the reports of ethnic cleansing in Darfur.
In March, the UN coordinator in Sudan, Mukesh Kapila, told the media that an ethnic cleansing campaign was taking place in Darfur that was comparable in character, if not scale, to the Rwanda genocide of 1994. Exiled Darfur political activist for over a year have warned about the preparation of genocide in the area.
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