UN alarmed by arrest of MSF aid worker in Sudan

GENEVA, May 31 (AFP) — The UN’s human rights chief, Louise Arbour, voiced serious concern Tuesday about the arrest of an international aid worker in Sudan who led damning research on rape in the conflict-ridden Darfur region.

“This is a very disturbing development,” the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement.

Top Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) official Paul Foreman, was detained in Khartoum Monday and accused of crimes against the Sudanese state. He was later released on bail.

Although the Sudanese judiciary declined to justify Foreman’s arrest, MSF believes it was due to his refusal to hand over evidence he used in a damning report about rape by pro-government forces in Darfur.

The medical aid group told AFP on Tuesday that its regional coordinator in Darfur, Vincent Hoedt, had also been arrested in the western city of Nyala.

MSF was also accused of “espionage, publication of false reports and of underming the Sudanese state,” following Foreman’s arrest, the group’s Dutch branch said in a statement.

Arbour insisted that MSF had done “nothing more than record these horrendous crimes and try to focus critically needed attention on them”.

“Rape and sexual violence are very real features of the life of the women of Darfur,” she added.

“This is the conclusion of our monitors, of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur and of all serious investigations into the unfolding human rights crisis in the region.”

Foreman recently published a report, entitled “The Crushing Burden of Rape: Sexual Violence in Darfur”, which said that around 500 women had been treated for rape in four and a half months in the western Sudanese province.