UN Egeland retreats from a camp, after Fur protest against Abuja deal
KALMA CAMP, Sudan, May 8 (Reuters) – U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland and aid workers beat a hasty retreat from a refugee camp in Darfur on Monday after a demonstration spun out of control and an aid worker was attacked.
The melee at the Kalma Camp in South Darfur occurred after thousands of Darfuris protested to demand that international troops deploy there to protect them.
A female refugee shouted that an aid worker was a member of the Janjaweed militia. The crowd then attacked a U.N. vehicle with axes and stones, shattering its windows.
The U.N. entourage travelling with Egeland, the U.N. under-secretary for humanitarian affairs, then left the camp to return to Nyala town, about 15 km (10 miles) away.
The residents of the camp also said they rejected the peace deal signed on Friday between Darfur’s main rebel faction and the government, calling it “incomplete”.
“This peace in Abuja is not complete. We reject it totally,” said Ezz El-Din Ahmed, who is from the Fur tribe, Darfur’s largest.
Egeland, who is on a visit to Darfur a month after the Sudanese authorities prevented him from travelling to the region, has called on Khartroum to give aid workers better access to Darfur, as agreed in the peace deal.
The main faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), led by Minni Arcua Minnawi, signed the peace agreement in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Friday 5 May. But a rival SLA faction, led by Abdelwahed Mohamed al-Nur (Fur tribe), rejected it along with a second Darfur rebel group.
Minnawi is from the smaller Zaghawa tribe but is militarily stronger than Nur, who, like many of those in the camps visited by Egeland on Monday, is from the Fur tribe.
“This peace is not reality,” said Mohammed Jaama Sineen from the Fur tribe, who has lived in Kalma camp near Nyala in South Darfur state for the past three years.
“We are asking for international forces. We want to ask Jan Egeland to send the U.N. to protect us,” he added.
Western governments have called for a U.N. mission to take over from the 7,000 African Union peacekeepers in Darfur. Sudan says it is undecided on the issue but said in the past it would only consider a U.N. mission in its vast west after a peace agreement.
Thousands of camp residents chanting: “Welcome, welcome international protection,” surrounded Egeland with signs which read, “Enough suffering for the Darfur people”.
“They (the government) want us to go home but we will not go back until Abdelwahed himself comes to Kalma to tell us there is peace,” said another Fur tribesman, Abdul Shafie Arba Hassan, who has been in Kalma for three years.
The SLA and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) took up arms in early 2003 accusing the government of neglecting Darfur, an arid region the size of France.
(Reuters/ST)