U.S. calls on Sudan to crack down on Janjaweed in Darfur
WASHINGTON, April 3, 2004 (dpa) — The United States called on the Sudanese government Friday to crackdown on paramilitary groups believed responsible for recent attacks on civilians in the Darfur region.
The ethnic Arab Janjaweed paramilitaries have been waging an offensive in western Sudan aimed at pushing out black African Moslems, causing more than 100,000 people to seek refuge in Chad. The United Nations has also raised concerns about the humanitarian crisis.
Another 800,000 non-Arab ethnic civilians from the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups have been internally displaced within the Darfur region, where they are “murdered, raped and looted” by about 20,000 Janjaweed militia recruited and armed by Khartoum, Human Rights Watch charged earlier Friday.
State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters that it is clear to the United States that the government in Khartoum is supporting the groups that continue to “burn villages and kill and abuse civilians”.
“We call on the government of Sudan to take immediate steps to stop the Janjaweed and to allow outside monitoring of the situation there,” Ereli said.
The conflict in the Darfur region, which began about 14 months ago, is not included in current peace negotiations in Kenya that seek to broker a separate and longer running conflict in southern Sudan.
The U.S. demands for an end to the Janjaweed offensive come as talks resumed in Chad with U.S. and E.U. officials. Ereli said the United States urges the government and opposition groups reach a ceasefire that will allow unrestricted humanitarian access to the country’s troubled regions.
The civil war between the Sudan’s Islamic-oriented government in the north and Christians in the south is one of the bloodiest conflicts in the world. The United States has been part of an international effort aimed at brokering a peace settlement there, but a December 31 deadline passed without an agreement, although one was believed to be near.
Meanwhile, human rights groups charge that Khartoum is using the ceasefire in the south, instituted under the peace talks, to free up helicopters and munitions to wage war on the black tribes in the western Darfur region.
Human Rights Watch charged that the Sudanese government was “complicit in crimes against humanity” in the Darfur conflict and that the Sudanese military was “indiscriminately bombing civilians”.
The current 14-month conflict escalated with the emergence of two new rebel groups – the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).
The armed rebels have demanded that Khartoum stop arming the Arab militia and address underdevelopment in the region.