Amnesty raises alarm over Sudan’s embattled Darfur region
LONDON, May 26, (AFP) — The London-based rights organization Amnesty International raised the alarm over the conflict raging in the Sudan’s western Darfur region.
“Militias allied to the government killed hundreds of civilians and government aircraft bombed villages,” said Amnesty in its 2004 report on human rights.
“Up to 600,000 people in Darfur were displaced within the region, and tens of thousands fled to Chad,” it said Wednesday as it charged government security forces had held captive hundreds of people incommunicado and without charge.
The conflict has pitted rebel groups against the Khartoum government, which is fighting alongside an Arab militia group, for the past 16 months.
Amnesty also denounced the widespread use of torture in war-torn Sudan, including against women, particularly in Darfur.
Rebels based in the oil-rich south of the country have also been fighting Khartoum since 1983, in what is currently Africa’s longest civil war.
The report noted that a ceasefire between the government and the southern-based Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) held most of last year, saying however that government-sponsored militias had burnt villages and killed scores of civilians in the country’s oil-rich areas.
Kenya said Tuesday Khartoum and the SPLA will sign key deals Wednesday on the remaining issues standing in the way of a final accord to end 21 years of civil war in the south, which together with recurrent famine and disease has claimed at least 1.5 million lives and displaced more than four million people.
Kenya has for two years been hosting the latest round of talks to end Sudan’s broader war, which opposes the mainly Christian and animist SPLA against the Islamic, Arabized regime in Khartoum.
The conflict in Darfur pits Khartoum and an allied Arab militia against ethnic African rebel groups.
The deals that are poised to be signed in Kenya on Wednesday do not cover the Darfur conflict.
Amnesty reported 10 executions last year and 100 death sentences handed out by the government. The report also slammed arbitrary trials.
It said floggings were imposed for several offenses, including public order offences.
Amputations were not known to have been carried out, however.
Police forces often resorted to excessive force against student demonstrations, using tear gas, beatings and firing live ammunition, Amnesty said, pointing to the government’s failure to investigate the deaths of three students.
Indigenous rights groups and newspapers saw their freedom of expression curbed and some of their staff momentarily jailed, it said.
Highlighting violence against women, Amnesty said they were often abducted and raped by pro-government militia members and that their freedom of movement was restricted.
“Women were singled out for flogging as a punishment for unlawful sexual intercourse in circumstances where men normally escaped unpunished,” it said.