Darfur militias killed at least 18 Chadians since December – HRW

Feb 5, 2006 (NDJAMENA) — Chadian and Sudanese militias based in Sudan’s conflict-ridden Darfur region have killed at least 18 Chadian civilians in almost daily raids into Chad since December, an international rights group said Sunday.

Tens of thousands of people have been displaced by the attacks on Chadian villages along the central African country’s border with Sudan, in which the militias of Arab-origin have targeted mainly non-Arab Chadians, Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

The statement is based on interviews and other research Human Rights Watch conducted in eastern Chad between early December and late January.

“You may have thought the terrible situation in Darfur couldn’t get worse, but it has,” the group’s Africa director, Peter Takirambudde, said in the statement. “Sudan’s policy of arming militias and letting them loose is spilling over the border, and civilians have no protection from their attacks, in Darfur or in Chad.”

In Darfur, an estimated 180,000 people have died, mainly of hunger and disease, and some 2 million have been displaced since the conflict started three years ago when rebels from the region’s ethnic African population revolted, accusing the Arab-dominated government in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, of discrimination and decades of neglect.

The government is widely alleged to have unleashed Arab militias, called Janjaweed, as a counterinsurgency strategy who carried out sweeping atrocities against ethnic African villagers. The government denies it supports the Janjaweed.

There are two Chadian rebel groups based along the border made up of deserters from Chad’s army and former high-ranking government officials, among them two nephews of Chad’s President Idriss Deby. They reportedly seek to overthrow Deby, but their reasons are not clear.

(ST/AP)