Sudan blames UN expelled official for discouraging IDPs return to villages

November 8, 2007 (KHARTOUM, Sudan) — The U.N. humanitarian director was ordered to leave south Darfur because he was discouraging civilians displaced by violence from returning to their villages, Sudan’s justice minister said Thursday.

Justice Minister Mohamed Ali al-Mardi praised the decision by south Darfur Governor Ali Mahmood Mohammed, saying there was sufficient evidence to back the accusations.

“State authorities were left with no other alternative but to take that decision so as to preserve the independence of Sudan,” al-Mardi was quoted as saying by the state news agency SUNA.

The justice minister said Wael Al-Haj Ibrahim, the south Darfur director of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, known as OCHA, was warned three times not to discourage the return of displaced civilians but did so anyway. He said Ibrahim also told displaced Darfurians who had gone back to their villages that they should return to the camps set up for them.

The U.N. announced the director’s expulsion on Wednesday, saying the governor sent a letter earlier this week asking Ibrahim to leave because “he was not complying with the Humanitarian Act.”

OCHA spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker had said the matter was being taken up with the central government, but al-Mardi’s announcement Thursday indicates Mohammed has Khartoum’s support.

Sudan’s government has stepped up pressure on Darfur civilians to leave camps where they have fled to avoid violence. Sudanese officials insist they are not forcing anyone to leave, but want to encourage refugees to return to their villages, because the camps have become too big, squalid and dangerous.

But late last month, U.N. officials said they had evidence that Sudanese government forces were chasing the refugees out of at least one camp, Otash, home to 60,000 people on the outskirts of Nyala.

The Aegis Trust, a British-based organization which works to prevent genocide and has offices in Africa, said the U.N. was warned by the governor last week that if U.N. officials opposed the dismantling of camps, he would ensure that those officials were expelled.

Violence erupted in Darfur in western Sudan in early 2003, when rebels from Darfur’s ethnic African majority took up arms against the Arab-dominated government.

Critics accuse Sudan of retaliating by arming local Arab militias known as the janjaweed, and the government is blamed for widespread atrocities against civilians. The government denies any guilt, but a cabinet minister and a janjaweed chief have been charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

More than 200,000 people have been killed in the violence, and an estimated 2.5 million civilians have fled to refugee camps in Darfur and neighboring countries. Darfur, which is the size of France, has three states, South Darfur, North Darfur and West Darfur, each with their own governor.

The gravity of the situation was highlighted last month when a U.N. statement cited reports of dozens of civilians killed, injured or missing in the rebel-held town of Muhajeria in South Darfur that was attacked by Arab militias days earlier.

The U.N. said the town was partly burned and looted and that its 20,000 inhabitants had fled. Rebels have said at least 48 were killed in the government attack, and aid groups counted at least 40 seriously injured.

(AP)