UN rights committee tells Sudan to cut off support for militias
July 27, 2007 (GENEVA) —The U.N. Human Rights Committee criticized Sudan on a range of issues Friday, demanding an assurance that no financial or material support will be given to militias engaged in ethnic cleansing in Darfur, and calling for the immediate abolition of slavery in the country.
The committee, in its first overall review of Sudan’s rights record in a decade, condemned what it called “widespread and systematic” rights abuses throughout Sudan, including murder, rape, forced evictions and attacks against civilians.
Human rights violations “continue to be committed with total impunity throughout Sudan and particularly in Darfur,” the panel of 18 independent experts said in a report.
“More or less covert assistance has been given to elements that have been pursuing gross violations of human rights,” said Ivan Shearer, an Australian member of the committee, which takes turns examining the performance of each of the 156 countries which are parties to the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
The Khartoum government is blamed for responding to a rebellion in its Western region of Darfur by unleashing janjaweed militias of Arab nomads, which are blamed for the worst atrocities in Darfur, including rapes and indiscriminate killings. An estimated 200,000 people have been killed and around 2.5 million displaced since the conflict began in 2003, when rebels from ethnic African tribes rose up against the Arab-dominated central government. The U.S. has condemned the killing as a genocide, a charge Sudan’s government denies.
Sudan needs to “ensure that no financial support or material is channeled to militias that engage in ethnic cleansing or the deliberate targeting of civilians,” the committee said, though it did not specify whether that referred to Darfur.
“This has been a major problem in Sudan,” Shearer told journalists in Geneva, where the committee meets.
Its report noted that Sudanese police, armed forces and national security forces are immune from prosecution under Sudanese law. In discussions with the U.N. panel, the Sudanese government could only provide a few examples of “serious crimes” that have been prosecuted, whether by criminal tribunals or courts set up specifically to investigate violations in Darfur, it said.
The panel made its conclusions and recommendations after reviewing information from Khartoum and the reports of United Nations bodies and numerous rights groups.
It said there continues to be “many cases of rape in Darfur,” even if official numbers are low because women fear that their claims will be associated with the crime of adultery.
“Women do not trust the police,” the report said.
Female genital mutilation, which the World Health Organization has called a form of “torture,” is practiced on Sudanese girls in one of its most grotesque forms, the panel said. It said Sudan has made efforts to end and criminalize the practice, which can involve sealing off the vagina or the complete removal of the clitoris. But “this assault on human dignity” persists, the panel said, demanding that Sudan bring perpetrators to justice.
The panel also decried widespread torture in Sudanese prisons and the government’s forced recruitment of child soldiers.
It said Sudan has made efforts to stamp out abductions of women and children, but much more needed to be done. Khartoum “should put a stop to all forms of slavery and abduction in its territory,” the committee said.
(AP)