Darfuri civilians, including women, reportedly shot in Khartoum

13 May 2008 — Disturbing reports received by the Aegis Trust in the past 24 hours indicate that in addition to the beatings and detention of hundreds of Darfuri civilians in Khartoum following the recent rebel attack, some Darfuri residents – including men and women – have been shot by the security services, both on the street and in their homes.

In one instance, an eyewitness described the shooting of a Zaghawa woman in the Umbada area of Omdurman on Sunday afternoon. “I saw this woman walking down the street with her brother when four members of the security forces drove up at high speed, slammed on the brakes and jumped out. They ordered the youth to put up his hands. The woman protested that this was her brother. One of the security men pulled out his gun and shot her in the face. She fell down dead. They pushed her brother into the vehicle and drove away. The woman was in her mid thirties. Her brother was 19 or 20 years old. They were from the Zaghawa tribe. They had nothing to do with the rebels. They were ordinary people who lived in this neighbourhood for years.”

There are also accounts of cases where security services have gone into Darfuri homes in Omdurman and slaughtered the residents.

“On Sunday afternoon the security services arrived in three cars outside one house in Umbada where twelve Darfuris were living,” a local resident told Aegis. “The Darfuris had been renting the house for a long time and had jobs in Khartoum, but they were all at home, frightened to go out because of the curfew. I saw the security officers go inside and then heard women screaming. This was followed by ten to twelve shots. The security men went away, but no-one dared venture near the house to see what had happened. Later in the day, the security services came back and took the bodies away with them.”

There are continuing allegations of the killing of Darfuri civilians in Omdurman today, with an elderly Zaghawa man and Zaghawa teenager reported dead in one marketplace after members of the security services drove in and started shooting at Darfuri residents.

Locals indicate that yesterday and again today, large numbers of Darfuri men have been stopped on the street or taken from their houses and made to stand in groups on the side of the road for hours until trucks are brought to take them away.

In some areas, it is reported that police are enforcing a continuous curfew, telling Darfuri residents to stay indoors if they don’t want to be taken away. In these areas, it is reported that lack of access to food is becoming a problem.

Residents claim to have seen Darfuri shops in Omdurman broken into, ransacked and destroyed by police and national security forces. Police have also been reported raiding Darfuri homes in the Umbada area of Omdurman yesterday for money and valuables.

“We are deeply concerned at reports of the detention en masse of residents in Khartoum based on their ethnicity,” says Dr James Smith, Chief Executive of the Aegis Trust. “We are even more alarmed at reports of the shooting of unarmed Darfuri civilians in the city. The Sudanese security forces tend to carry out counter-insurgency by atrocity. Parallels may be drawn between the treatment of Dafuris in Khartoum today and treatment of Tutsis in Kigali in 1990 nearly four years before the genocide, when all Tutsi residents were accused of being ‘fifth columnists’ for the Rwandan Patriotic Front after the rebel group invaded Rwanda from their base in Uganda. This should be sounding loud alarm bells for the international community.”

For more information, contact David Brown, mobile: 07921 471985, email: [email protected]