Sudan’s Darfur war recalls Rwanda bloodshed-UN
(Adds Sudanese government reaction, U.S. comment)
By Katie Nguyen
NAIROBI, March 19 (Reuters) – Pro-government Arab militias in western Sudan’s Darfur region are carrying out systematic killings of African villagers reminiscent of the Rwandan genocide, a U.N. official said on Friday.
“We have a vicious war going on which is leading to the violation of human rights on a scale comparable to historic situations, increasingly for example Rwanda,” Mukesh Kapila, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, told reporters.
“The only difference between Rwanda and Darfur now is the numbers of dead, murdered, tortured, raped… Some people are using the term ethnic cleansing to describe what is going on in Darfur and I would say that that is not far off the mark… All the warning signs are there for ethnic cleansing.”
The Sudanese government said it considered Darfur’s Arab militias outlaws and there was no comparison between the situation there and Rwanda, where in 1994 extremist Hutus killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days.
Two rebel groups launched a revolt against the government in Darfur in February 2003. They accuse the government of neglecting the region and arming Arab “Janjaweed” militias who loot and burn African villages.
Kapila said more than 10,000 people had been killed in the fighting, but a senior Sudanese official disputed the figure, saying the number killed was substantially lower.
“Some people have died but there is no figure of this magnitude,” said Presidential Political Affairs Adviser Gutbi Mahdi. “People like him (Kapila) like to exaggerate in order to draw the attention of the international community and its funding.”
“SCORCHED-EARTH”
Fighting has intensified since peace talks with one group collapsed in December 2003 and U.N. officials estimate the war has displaced up to one million people, with more than 100,000 refugees fleeing to Chad. The government disputes the figures.
Kapila said aid workers in Darfur had reported a systematic scorched-earth policy. “In our estimation it’s now the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis and quite possibly the world’s hottest war at the moment,” he said.
He cited a February 28 attack on Tawila village in which at least 100 women were raped in a few hours. Six girls were raped in front of their fathers who were later killed.
In the same attack 75 people were killed, all the houses looted and about 150 women and 200 children abducted.
“All the information we’ve been able to acquire through observers on the ground (shows) that the Janjaweed are involved in many of these activities,” Kapila said.
“People with uniforms are doing these things. To what extent it is sanctioned by the government, I do not know… We’ve heard reports of planes and helicopters being used in attacks on villages and reports of civilians being killed in those attacks.” Mahdi denied any government targeting of civilians.
Kapila said the rebels were guilty of looting aid convoys taking food to refugees fleeing the war.
Like southern rebels discussing peace with the government at talks in Kenya, western insurgents say they are fighting to end years of neglect and exploitation by the Islamist government but have so far won none of the concessions southerners have done at the negotiating table.
Washington has said it could consider removing Khartoum from its “state sponsors of terrorism” list if it reached a deal with the southern rebels.
But U.S. special envoy to Sudan John Danforth told reporters in Kenya the humanitarian situation in Darfur needed to be resolved before normal ties could be established between Khartoum and Washington.
“It’s something that has to be resolved before there can be normal relations between the U.S. and Sudan,” he said. (Additional reporting by Nima Elbagir in Khartoum)