UN accuses Sudan of bombing Darfur by UN News / Washington Post / BBC News 10:48am 7th Aug, 2004   10 August,2004    UN accuses Sudan of bombing Darfur.(BBC News)    The United Nations says the Sudanese government has carried out fresh bombing raids in the province of Darfur using helicopter gunships. The UN's office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (OCHA) says in a statement that the attacks are thought to have targeted rebel groups. The pro-government Janjaweed militia are also continuing to attack refugees in southern Darfur, it adds.The violence has already forced more people to flee.    However, the Sudanese ambassador to Britain, Dr Hassan Abdin, said his government was working hard to rein in the Janjaweed. "My government has promised to finish the job which it started a few weeks ago on disarming the Janjaweed. Practical steps have been taken already," he told Britain's Channel 4 television news.    The OCHA is highly critical of the Sudanese government. It says that despite promising to improve humanitarian access, Khartoum has been placing so many restrictions on aid workers that access has actually got worse over the past week.    Flights operated by the World Food Programme have been inexplicably grounded, for example, while other aid agencies say they are having difficulty recruiting local staff because of government-imposed restrictions and delays.The UN refugee agency says that Sudan's government is putting pressure on internally displaced people to return to their villages, despite concerns over safety.    Last week, the Sudanese government and the UN agreed on a plan to tackle the Darfur crisis, which included measures to provide safe areas around certain towns and villages. "We have interviewed people in hospital who tell us they have gone back to the villages... and have been shot by Janjaweed raiders," says United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman Peter Kessler in Geneva.    Meanwhile, the US State Department says it is investigating a claim by a human rights organisation that the Sudanese authorities have harassed and detained refugees in Darfur who talked to Secretary of State Colin Powell and other foreign officials.    The report by Amnesty International claims there have been multiple arrests in Darfur in recent weeks of people who have expressed their views on the continuing violence to foreign journalists and to foreign officials.It says 15 men in the refugee camp in northern Darfur visited by Colin Powell at the end of June were arrested soon after the visit. Five others from the same camp were allegedly detained a few weeks later after a visit by the French foreign minister. Other people have been arrested after talking to members of the African Union ceasefire commission, it adds.    7.8.2004.    30 Day Peace Plan for Darfur ( SBS World News)    The Sudanese government has approved a 30-day action plan to ease the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and begin disarming the outlaw groups terrorising the western province, a UN spokesman said.    "The agreement reached Wednesday night ... has now been finalised by the Sudanese government," said Fred Eckhard, spokesman for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Sudan has been under pressure, with threats of UN sanctions. The plan was negotiated by Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail and Jan Pronk, Mr Annan's special envoy for Sudan. It is expected to be officially issued on Monday. The plan details measures to be taken within 30 days to begin disarming the Janjaweed Arab militias and other outlaw bands that have been preying on Darfur's black population, to improve security in the province and to take measures to ease the humanitarian crisis there. "The Secretary-General attaches great importance to substantive and verifiable progress being made during the next 30 days towards restoring full security for the Darfur region," Mr Eckhard said.    The Janjaweed are blamed for much of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and the United States and other nations have accused the Sudanese government of giving them free rein to quell a rebellion in the region by black African groups.    6 August 2004    "Sudan should be able to disarm militias and other forces quickly, UN expert says. (UN News)    The extrajudicial killings of civilians in western and southern Sudan have been mainly coordinated by the national military and militias backed by the Khartoum Government, which must take quick action to disarm irregular forces and protect its people, a United Nations human rights expert has said.    UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial killings Asma Jahangir's call came in a report released today on her team's two-week investigation of the deaths and displacement in Darfur in the west and the Shilook Kingdom in the south in June.The expert held an open meeting of representatives of Darfur's Arab and African militias in Khartoum. According to the report, both sides acknowledged that the Government had given them weapons, but had given the Arabs more. "It appeared that the distribution of arms to these tribes and the amounts distributed was common knowledge," she writes.    The National Armed Forces are the country's main defence, but the Government is empowered to recruit volunteer Popular Defence Forces (PDF) to assist regular forces. A senior PDF officer in El-Fashir "assured me that it would not be difficult to disarm the PDF as the Government kept records of the arms distributed and was formally in command of the PDF," Ms. Jahangir says.    The slow pace of the Government's response to its own citizens' cries for help for many years showed either "complete disrespect for the right to life," especially in Darfur, or, "at worst, complicity in the events," Ms. Jahangir observes.    The conflict between the Government and both African areas - in the south and west - had a common factor. "In both rebellions, economic grievances are a factor and similar tactics are often used by the Government in its response, notably sponsoring militias (apart from the defence forces) to fight the rebels and, more distressingly, to terrorize and kill civilians suspected of supporting the rebels," she concludes.    Citing evidence of "large-scale extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions," she recommends a series of measures, including steps to end the culture of impunity prevailing in Sudan.    After having held talks in Khartoum, the three states of Darfur and Upper Nile State, as well as in Nairobi, Kenya, and Cairo, Egypt, she sent Sudan's Permanent Mission to the UN a copy of her findings. The Government failed to offer a response, according to the report.    Her report was released just before a UN spokesman announced that the Sudanese Government had finalized an agreement reached earlier this week between its Foreign Minister, Osman Ismail, and the senior United Nations envoy to the country, Jan Pronk, to disarm the militias.    Ms. Jahangir says many of the people she interviewed recalled that the cries for help from Darfur had gone out for several years. Clashes between Arab nomads and sedentary African farmers since the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s were noted by a previous UN rapporteur in 1997.    "They reportedly only flared up to attain their present magnitude after the Government of Sudan became involved, carrying out military operations against civilians through its armed forces, including the Popular Defence Forces, and sponsoring militias, including from some ethnically Arab tribes," Ms. Jahangir says. "A large number of people whom I met had a strong perception that the Government was pursuing a policy of 'Arabization' of the Sudan, and, in particular, the Darfur region. Allegedly, those of Arab descent seek to portray themselves as 'pure' Muslims, as opposed to Muslims of African ethnicity," she adds. For all of Sudan's conflicts, a comprehensive, just and transparent peace process that takes these grievances into account is needed, she says.    August 8, 2004    "Stop the Slaughter", by Bob MacPherson (The Washington Post)    A day in Darfur is as close as you'll ever get to walking back and forth through the looking glass. In Darfur you might, as I did, witness an eight-pound 3-year-old who will be dead in a few hours; then the next day you're back in the United States, where 60 percent of the population is overweight.    This is something few can grasp even if they see it. I spent a troubled period recovering from injuries received in the Vietnam War. After that I believed I was immune to personal tragedies. I'm not. Darfur is as close to hell on earth as we can imagine.    Aid workers have seen hungry people before, but even those directly involved in emergency humanitarian assistance seldom encounter starvation and virtually never witness the starvation of tens of thousands of people.    The cruel irony in all of this is that the world has been down this road before, in both Somalia and Rwanda. In fact, I thought I'd seen it all before going to Darfur last month. I'd been to Baidoa, Somalia, in December 1992 and to Rwanda two years later. In both countries I saw mass starvation and murder. But what I saw in Darfur is worse. I walked into camps and saw women and children in every state of human misery. Too far gone to eat, many would be dead by morning. Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, I heard about the systematic rape of women. It was not two or three women telling me this. Virtually every woman I met in a camp had a story of brutal violation. This is what the world faces in Darfur.    The United Nations has given the Sudanese government 30 days to disarm the mounted militias known as Janjaweed and bring the war-torn Darfur region under control. That's 30 days too late for more than 13,000 women and children. More than 440 people a day are dying from starvation in Darfur. And this does not include people who will be murdered outright.    In addition, the Sudanese government is in armed conflict with two forces, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, in Darfur. It is also trying to conclude a critical peace agreement between North and South Sudan. Is it realistic to expect that government to also disarm a vicious Janjaweed militia and facilitate international relief?    Although this is the worst humanitarian disaster in the world right now, the United Nations has received only $158 million of its $350 million donor appeal for Darfur. While catastrophic loss of life is occurring, the international community is buying time. For what, exactly? How many people have to be killed or starved to death before the world acts? The international community has the resources to mount a swift response, but thus far it has lacked the will to stop the slaughter. Rich governments must respond, both for the immediate crisis and for the long term.    The Security Council has invoked Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter and endorsed deployment of African Union cease-fire monitors and troops to protect the monitors. To date, a mandate has not been endorsed to provide protection for the Sudanese population and the security required for humanitarian assistance. This could be mobilized under the auspices of the African Union, with support from the international community.    Since my return, my heart has sunk as arguments intensified about whether the Darfur situation should be defined as genocide or ethnic cleansing, and whether sanctions should be applied. What's happening in Darfur is the wholesale slaughter and rape of unimaginable numbers of human beings. Sudan is a sovereign nation. But it has utterly failed in its responsibility to protect its citizens. Definitions should be left to the dictionary -- now is the time for action.    The situation in Darfur is not an American issue. It is not a European issue or an African issue. It is the most fundamental statement of what we stand for as members of the human race. The slaughter and rape of hundreds of thousands of people is not acceptable by any standard of humanity. If there is ever a time the international community has to come together, and do so in a decisive fashion, it is now.    (The writer is CARE's security director).
	Next (more recent) news item
	Next (older) news item