A Government Garrison was an Eyewitness
September 17, the janjaweed bands abducted a vehicle on the way between al-Fasher and Nyala and raped 4 women. A government garrison was an eyewitness in the crime scene (SHRO-Cairo, March-November 2005).
By Zeinab Osman Al-Hussain*
Dec 19, 2005 — The recurring reports on the dreadful crimes of raping the women and children of Darfur and the other atrocities of murdering the elderly, burning villages, and sacking people’s livestock, goods, and other properties remind the reader with the fairy tales of demons and evil spirits in the episodes of ancient times.
The dread, however, is real. It is happening everyday before eyes of the the ruling apparatus of Darfur today: the police, army officers, administrators and supporters of state bodies and political parties. Our politically-divided world is also watching, almost silently, except for human rights organizations and other voluntary groups.
What is worst, however, is that this unprecedented criminality has been taking place selectively against women, children, and elderly people since the young, able-bodied generations of Darfur have been taking arms and taking with that the lives of one another, government, militias or rebels!
Once again, the government incited and pursued these destructive and most inhuman climates of civil war. The horror of the brutalities was made possible by a State’s “divine wrath” upon a nation of innocent humans. Judged by the frequency, intensity, and dimensions of the crimes, it is difficult to think of the government’s war in Darfur in any possible term other than a full-fledged genocide.
The Human Rights Watch detailed report on the Darfur crisis with the hundreds of documentary materials HRW brought to the world, the Sudanese Organization Against Torture (SOAT) updated information on the regular commissions of the “irregular” criminal deeds (by all standards of crime), and the Sudanese Human Rights Quarterly analytical reports on the gross human rights violations committed in Darfur and the other parts of the country filled the reader’s mind with a creeping depression.
Since the former ministers of foreign affairs, information, attorney-general and justice, and the other executives and supporters simply denied the genocide of Darfur all the time, many readers have been asking with a helpless cry of fright: are we hearing fiction or some exaggerated stories, or is it true that all this volume of savagery has actually occurred in the peaceful region of Darfur, the old seat of the Sudanese sultanates, the land of historical richness, dried foods, and rich minerals, and the people known for courage and generosity?!
The reports said that tens of women and child girls have been daily raped in more than a year by the janjaweed armed men. In one incidence, 4 women were raped and “a government garrison was an eyewitness,” reported the Sudanese Human Rights Quarterly, Issue 20, January 2006, SHRO-Cairo.
As the women of the world definitely feel all over the world, the vast majority of men might never pause to reflect in this catastrophic situation and the horrors the victimized females and their children continue to suffer when raped by men, especially in the different locations of conservative Darfur where the moral shame of rape is equivalent to or is more hurting than physical death, and very few braves dare to defend a women’s complaint against the dominant males.
Raping a woman and her girls in El-Fasher by identifiable militias before the eyes of a government garrison (whose major mission is to protect the lives and property of people) posits an unprecedented dilemma of wrong-doing in the world of humans: for here is a blend of the janjaweed bands’ non-ethical deeds mixed up in the same incidence with the hypocrisy, brutality, recklessness, and protection of a State pursuing (in the name of God) all these crimes against humanity, murdering the elderly, degrading the women, and abusing children.
I should question with millions of women all over the world the real meaning of the international charters, declarations, and conventions that speak highly of the worth of the human self, the rights of women and children, the dignity of human societies, and the full answerable responsibilities of governments to the people they rule and the world they belong. And yet, these powerful moral and legal tools fall short of protecting tens of thousands of the Darfur poor women and their children from rapes, the most brutal transgression against their bodies, minds, and souls, and above all their good reputation, human dignity, and life goals.
“Crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by Sudanese military and militia forces have included the targeted killing, summary execution, assault and rape of thousands of civilians, the destruction of hundreds of villages, the theft of millions of livestock, and the forced displacement of more than two million people” (Entrenching Impunity, Government Responsibility for International Crimes in Darfur, Human Rights Watch, December 2005)
“The Sudanese Army has lost its good traditions and appreciated norms by the side of people when it fell under command of a ruthless coup party.”
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“Even some Arab members in the Security Council and many African States were silent!”
“The International Community wants it, its own way!”
“The Sudanese native wisdom can guide the State to end the crisis with a national constitutional conference.”
“The corrupted state managers… the State Security Department… the ruling party… are all Janjaweed Chiefs, uniting against the poor women and the children of Darfur when they search for� desert woods to cook food in the remote!”
These were some of the informative statements posted these past days on the crisis. It is an irrevocable fact whether in secular or in religious thought, nonetheless, that a wrong-doer cannot judge his or her public wrong. A non-partisan court, like the International Criminal Court, will say the fair sentence.
“Happy Eid! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!” Good for all; not yet for the displaced people or the raped women and children unless they would be returned home with dignity, sufficiency, and protection.
What is the use of all the honors and the domains that men control in formal or informal spheres of power, if it is not for the protection of the weak against injustices of the strong?!
* Zeinab Osman Al-Hussain, the former President of the Sudanese Women’s Forum (in exile).