Atrocities daily in Sudan’s Darfur – UN official
Nov 29, 2006 (GENEVA) — A top U.N. official said on Wednesday atrocities were occurring daily in Sudan’s Darfur region and neighbouring Chad said rebel attacks from Sudan had placed it “in a state of war”.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said Sudan’s government and militias linked to and supported by it were “responsible for the most serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law”.
“The ongoing atrocities must stop,” Arbour said. They were, she added, “a daily occurrence”.
In a separate news conference, outgoing U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland said tens of thousands of people driven from their homes had been dying from hunger and disease in a crisis that was growing worse by the day.
Egeland said 4 million people in the region and in Chad, where many civilians from Darfur have fled, needed emergency assistance, but the Sudanese government was not helping aid agencies to get relief in.
Chad on Wednesday proposed moving more than 200,000 Sudanese refugees far away from its violent eastern border with Sudan. Foreign Minister Ahmat Allam-Mi repeated accusations that the Sudanese government was backing rebels seeking to end President Idriss Deby’s rule in Chad.
“Chad is in a state of war,” he said. He was careful to add N’Djamena was not declaring war on Sudan.
A senior Sudanese official from Darfur denied the situation had worsened.
“There is an international campaign to offer false data to international public opinion, including this Council,” Dr. Farah Mustafa, deputy governor of the state of South Darfur, told the U.N. rights body meeting in Geneva.
“The information about hundreds of thousands of killed is untrue,” he said.
TRIBAL MILITIAS
Mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms in early 2003, accusing the central government of marginalising the arid area. Khartoum mobilised tribal militias to quell the revolt.
Those militias now stand accused of a campaign of rape, murder and pillage which Washington calls genocide. Khartoum denies genocide and the International Criminal Court is investigating alleged war crimes.
Aid agencies are trying to help some 2.5 million Darfuris driven from their homes in 3-1/2 years of conflict. Experts estimate about 200,000 have been killed, a figure Khartoum disputes, saying 9,000 have died.
The United Nations on Wednesday condemned the expulsion by Sudan earlier this month of a Norwegian aid agency from Darfur, saying there was no clear justification for the move.
“Their expulsion threatens to create a significant vacuum in terms of humanitarian service provision in South Darfur and places a greater strain on existing humanitarian operations,” Sudan’s U.N. humanitarian coordinator Manuel Aranda Da Silva said in a statement.
In Geneva, Arbour said U.N. monitors were reporting that attacks by government-allied militias were continuing and the militias were consolidating in government-controlled areas where they were receiving more weapons.
Mustafa said that, if Arbour had evidence of government collusion with militias, she should produce it.
In Khartoum, presidential adviser Mustafa Osman Ismail said Sudan’s position against the deployment of U.N. troops in Darfur prevailed at talks with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in Ethiopia earlier this month.
A communique announced by Annan and approved by Sudan on Nov. 16 in Addis Ababa, said “a hybrid operation” of U.N. and African Union (AU) troops was agreed in principle, pending clarification of the size of the force.
“The talk now is about African troops, African control and an African command,” Ismail said. Sudan has only accepted U.N. support in logistics, finance and in providing military and police experts, he said.
The AU Peace and Security Council was due to meet in the Nigerian capital Abuja on Thursday to discuss the future of its 7,000-member force in Darfur.
The body is expected to extend the mandate of the under-funded and ill-equipped force of 7,000 that has been unable to stop the violence in Darfur despite the May peace agreement. The force’s mandate expires on Dec. 31.
(Reuters)