Sudan “deliberately starving” civilians in Darfur: UN report
NAIROBI, May 6 (AFP) — Sudan’s government is deliberately starving civilians in at least one town in the troubled western Darfur region, according to a UN report obtained by AFP, which also pointed to a campaign of ethnic cleansing and other serious abuses there
Numerous testimonies… substantiated by the actual observations on the ground, particularly the longstanding prevention of access to food, alludes to a strategy of systematic and deliberate starvation being enforced by the GoS (government of Sudan) and its security forces on the ground,” said the report compiled after several UN agencies visited the town of Kailek in South Darfur on April 25.
“It is obvious that the armed persons ‘guarding’ the IDPs (internally displaced people) have generally prevented the influx of food… including initiatives by the IDPs themselves to go into the forest to fetch basic food necessities,” it said.
It alleged that the local commissioner had decreed that IDPs should be prevented by force from leaving Kailek and that the only way round this edict was to pay a hefty fee to security forces there.
A food delivery destined for the IDPs in early March was “appropriated by janjawid fighters (militias allied to the government)… who used it to feed themselves and their camels,” said the report.
Consequently, the IDPs “are subsisting on extremely limited food rations, highly inadequate to meet even the minimun standards,” it said, stressing this has been a long-term problem.
Many are eating burnt sorghum rescued from the ruins of destroyed villages, which has “no nutritional value.”
“Eight or nine children are dying in Kailek every day because of malnutrition,” it said.
The report made several references to the total destruction by government forces and allied Janjawid militia of 23 local villages populated by the Fur ethnic group and stressed that nearby “Arab” settlements had been left untouched.
It described these actions as a “campaign to cleanse” a large area of its Fur population, echoing allegations of ethnic cleansing made in recent weeks by senior UN officials.
While conceding that human rights abuses had taken place in Darfur, Khartoum has consistently denied reports of ethnic cleansing in the region, where rebels drawn mainly from the Fur, Zaghawa and Massalit groups rose up in February 2003, prompting a heavy-handed military response from government forces and allied militias.
A shaky ceasefire is currently in force.
The report also described sanitary, shelter, and medical conditions in Tailek as “appalling”, “deplorable”, “inhumane” and “unfit for any human habitation”, and noted that many women IDPs had complained of persistent sexual abuse.
Even the most basic medical facilities were unavailable, it said.
The report accused the GoS of “deliberately deceiving the United Nations by repeatedly refuting claims to the seriousness of the situation in Kailek as well as having actively resisted the need for intervention by preventing the UN access to the area.”
“Kailek is but one of several locations (in Darfur) where civilians are living under similar conditions without having been able to communicate their ordeal to the humanitarian community,” the report concluded.
The UN team that visited Kailek included officials from UNICEF, the World Health Organisation, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.