100,000 Sudanese driven from homes by renewed clashes in south - UN by United Nations / Human Rights Watch 1:05pm 24th Apr, 2004   Thousands of Sudanese driven from homes by renewed clashes in south - UN    12 May 2004    The intensified fighting between Sudanese Government-backed militias and the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) has driven up to 100,000 people from the Shilluk Kingdom of southern Sudan, with about half of them fleeing into areas that are inaccessible to United Nations humanitarian workers, a UN spokesman said today.    Armed groups have raped their victims and looted property since the fighting escalated in early March, while villages have been burned to the ground, destroying schools and clinics, spokesman Fred Eckhard told journalists in New York.    23 April 2004 ( United Nations News)    "Looming major humanitarian catastrophe" in Darfur.    A high-level United Nations inter-agency mission will visit western Sudan next week to assess the humanitarian needs of 1.2 million victims of conflict in the Darfur region, where black Sudanese refugees say they have been the victims of atrocities by Arab Sudanese militias.    The mission, from 27 April until 2 May, will be led by James Morris, Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), which today warned of a looming "major humanitarian catastrophe" in Darfur, where 665,000 people have been internally displaced and 453,000 others affected in addition to the more than 100,000 refugees who have fled to neighbouring Chad.    Earlier this month a senior UN official described the situation as a coordinated "scorched-earth" campaign of ethnic cleansing, but a humanitarian ceasefire accord has since been signed between the Sudanese Government and two rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).    "The need for emergency food aid in Darfur is acute. The conflict has driven hundreds of thousands of people from their farms and homes and left them completely destitute. Food assistance is crucial to saving lives," Mr. Morris said, appealing for $98 million, WFP's part of the overall $115 million UN appeal launched earlier this month.    "It is not too late to avert a catastrophe in Darfur, but only if those involved and the international community act without further delay," he added.    The UN World Health Organization (WHO) added its voice to the appeal today. "Intensified and urgent action is needed…to address one of the most severe humanitarian emergencies today. Given the current situation, the humanitarian crisis will last several months," it said in a news release in Geneva. The agency noted there had been outbreaks of measles, widespread reporting of rape and severe malnutrition.    Also in Geneva today the 53-state UN Human Rights Commission adopted overwhelmingly a draft decision expressing deep concern over the situation - 50 countries voted in favour, the United States cast the lone opposing ballot and Australia and Ukraine abstained. The US vote followed rejection of amendments it had proposed, including a call to the Sudanese Government to ensure an end to attacks against the citizens of Darfur and to its support for the Janjaweed militia.    A UN High Commission for Human Rights (OHCHR) fact-finding mission is already in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum and it is hoped it will travel to Darfur today, a spokesman said.    On 2 April Jan Egeland, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, told reporters in New York he could find no other words than ethnic cleansing to describe the "organized campaign of forced depopulation of entire areas" by the Janjaweed militia. Sudanese President Omer Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir has invited UN agencies to view the situation on the ground with their own eyes.    New York, April 23, 2004. ( Human Rights Watch)    Sudan: Government and Militias Conspire in Darfur Killings    In a joint operation in the Darfur region of Sudan, government troops working with Arab militias detained 136 African men whom the militias massacred hours later, Human Rights Watch said today.    Human Rights Watch has documented dozens of attacks by Arab militias, known as janjaweed, in almost a month of research inside Darfur. All but two of the attacks were carried out in conjunction with government forces.       "The janjaweed are no longer simply militias supported by the Sudanese government," said Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch. "These militias work in unison with government troops, with total impunity for their massive crimes."      The 136 men, all members of the Fur ethnic group aged between 20 and 60, were rounded up in early March in two separate sweeps in the Garsila and Mugjir areas in Wadi Saleh. They were then taken in army lorries to nearby valleys where they were made to kneel before being killed with a bullet in the back of the neck.      Most of those killed had sought refuge in the Garsila and Mugjir areas after their villages were burned and pillaged by government troops and janjaweed militiamen under the command of Ali Kwoshib, janjaweed commander in the Jebel Marra area.      Human Rights Watch said many janjaweed fighters are organized into battalions that have the same structure as those in the government army. They use the same weapons as regular soldiers and their leaders wear stripes on their uniforms that are identical to those of the regular army. An increasing number of janjaweed fighters wear the same uniforms as government soldiers. The only difference is that the janjaweed uniforms have a breast pocket badge depicting an armed man on horseback.      Operations carried out by the janjaweed often enjoy air support from the government of Sudan, both aerial bombardment before operations and helicopter reconnaissance afterwards to ensure the area is empty. In many villages, regular troops and janjaweed forces establish a joint presence—often in the local police station—before going out to burn and pillage.      On the same day as the two massacres, March 5, nine Fur omdas (chiefs) who had been arrested a week earlier were shot dead in government prisons in Garsila and Mugjir. Their families reported their deaths after being told to collect their bodies for burial.      Villagers from the Garsila area told Human Rights Watch that they woke up on March 5 to find an area encompassing 32 villages surrounded by government troops and janjaweed. The government and militia forces then entered the villages and began asking men where they came from. One hundred and four individuals—most of them people who had been displaced from villages in the Zamey area south of Deleig—were taken to the government prison in Deleig, northeast of Garsila. That same night, according to local people, 72 of the 104 were loaded into army trucks and driven two kilometers to a valley where they were executed.      Human Rights Watch said that thirty-two of the men also rounded up in the Garsila sweep are still in detention, believed to be at risk of torture and death.      Among the other 72, there was one survivor: a man left for dead. He crawled back to Deleig after the massacre, reaching the village in the early hours of March 6, when he alerted local people to the killings. One of those he spoke to told Human Rights Watch the government and janjaweed forces appeared to be targeting the populations of villages that had been destroyed in an orgy of burning that began after Ali Kwoshib established a janjaweed base in Garsila in July 2003. The survivor, who is recovering in Deleig and cannot be named, said he and the others selected for execution were taken to the valley in army trucks and cars, "with janjaweed on horses" accompanying the government forces.      Another 65 men were reportedly executed in a similar operation in the Mugjir area some 80 kilometers east of Garsila. Details of this killing are not available because there were no survivors.      The Wadi Saleh massacres conform to a well-established pattern of joint operations by government and janjaweed forces. Until early this year, the janjaweed had the support but not the active participation of the government army in their operations. In recent months, however, the vast majority of the attacks against the African population of Darfur have been joint attacks by the regular army and the militias.      As Sheikh Abdullah Mohammed Hussein, the headman of Terbeba village, said after a joint government-janjaweed attack that killed 31 people and wounded 12 in Terbeba, "They come together, they fight together and they leave together."      "It is imperative that all janjaweed forces withdraw from villages they have occupied and any barracks or garrisons nearby," said Roth. "Unless this happens, refugees and displaced people will never return to their farms and villages, whether there is a ceasefire in place or not." Visit the related web page
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