UN rings alarm bells on ethnic cleansing in Sudan
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS, April 3 (Reuters) – A senior U.N. official said the world needed to pressure the Sudan government and rebels into ending terror, rape, murder and ethnic cleansing of black Africans by Arab militia in the border region with Chad.
Jan Egeland, the undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told a news conference on Friday that while the Khartoum government did not appear to have started the violence in the Darfur region, it was doing little to stop it.
“I have no reason to believe that the government is actively planning it, but I have reason to say that little is done to stop it, and therefore it seems as if it is being condoned,” Egeland said.
“We must put pressure on the parties,” he said after briefing the U.N. Security Council. The 15-member body issued a statement telling all parties to join cease-fire talks in Chad, which have been boycotted by one party or another.
Close to 1 million people have been affected by the conflict, with some 750,000 forced out of their homes and tens of thousands having fled to Chad, Egeland said. He would not estimate the number killed but suspected it was considerable.
“I consider this ethnic cleansing,” rather than genocide, Egeland said in answer to questions.
He said the Janjaweed militias were “primarily responsible” and the targets of the campaign are the region’s black African population, especially the Fur, Zaghawas and Massalit ethnic communities.
U.N. officials have described Darfur as one of the world’s worst humanitarian and human rights catastrophes. The Geneva-based office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights is organizing a team to probe the atrocities.
The U.N. World Food Program estimates 1.2 million people need aid but access is limited and only 300,000 can be reached.
“It’s not mass starvation yet but the possibility is strong,” Egeland said. A new U.N. appeal needed $115 million and an added $30 million to care for refugees,” he said.
Sudan’s U.N. ambassador, Elfatih Mohamed Ahmed Erwa, said U.N. officials inflated figures in describing the crisis.
“It is inflated in its real magnitude, I think in both the number of people displaced, the number who have died and also the number of refugees,” Erwa told reporters.
He also denied government involvement.
But Egeland said too many aid workers had seen beatings, killings and gang rapes and tried to alert local authorities, who did not respond.
“Scorched-earth tactics are being employed throughout Darfur, including the deliberate destruction of schools, wells, seeds and food supplies, making whole towns and villages uninhabitable.” he said.
The Darfur conflict, in part a struggle over scarce resources, broke out as the Sudanese government and rebel groups in the south are nearing a peace treaty after years of warfare. “Next to the Congo, the Sudan has been the killing fields of our generation,” Egeland said