Severe human rights violations reported in Sudan: UN
NEW YORK, May 7, 2004 (dpa) — The Sudanese government and the rebel groups locked in the civil war in Sudan’s western Darfur region have killed and raped the civilian population there and severely violated human rights, a United Nations report said Friday.
A team of the Geneva-based U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights twice visited Darfur last month to probe reports of violations, concluding that the people in Darfur continue to “endure armed conflict and severe human rights and humanitarian crisis.”
“Rebel forces appear to have violated human rights and humanitarian law,” the team’s report said.
“Notwithstanding that fact, the mission identified disturbing patterns of massive human rights violations in Darfur perpetrated by the government of Sudan and its proxy militia, many of which constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity,” the report said.
In another damning report released Friday, the organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the Sudanese government is responsible for “ethnic cleansing” and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
The organizations said Khartoum has overseen and directly participated in massacres, summary executions of civilians, burnings of towns and villages, and the forcible depopulation of wide swathes of land long-inhabited by the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups.
The United Nations report said a “reign of terror” exists today in Darfur because of repeated attacks on civilians by the government and proxy militiamen, use of indiscriminate aerial bombings and ground attacks on unarmed civilians and disproportionate use of force by the government and rebel groups.
The U.N. said the fighting was initiated by the rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which drew its forces from the Zaghawa, Fur and Masalit tribes. The government in Khartoum then sponsored fighters of apparently Arab descend to fight the African rebels.
It said an ethnically-based conflict was met by an ethnically- based response, building on long tribal rivalries in the region of Darfur.
The investigation showed that the patterns of attacks on civilians include killing, rape, pillage of livestocks and destruction of property, water resources and massive displacement of much of the Darfur population.
The patterns of violence pointed to an intent by Khartoum to subjugate people who are suspected of providing help to the rebels and to prevent them from leaving the country.
“It is that the current pattern of massive and gross human rights violations as reported by those displaced raises very serious concerns as to their survival, security and human dignity,” the report said.
It said the situation of displaced people has become “increasingly untenable” if the current ceasefire is not observed by the warring parties.
The report said there are now more than 1 million displaced people inside Darfur, compared with 250,000 in September 2003. Tens of thousands of Sudanese have also taken refuge in neighbouring Chad.
Sudan was elected this week to serve for three years, starting in January, in the 53-nation U.N. Commission on Human Rights in Geneva by a New York group known as the Economic and Social Council. Sudan’s election drew a protest from the United States.