Sudan allowing 16 militia camps in Darfur: Human Rights Watch
NEW YORK, Aug 27 (AFP) — Sudan is allowing its proxy militia to keep at least 16 camps in its strife-torn western region of Darfur, Human Rights Watch said, days before a UN deadline for Khartoum to stop the violence.
The US-based rights watchdog said its investigators had collected information on an extensive network of bases in West and North Darfur, maintained by the government-backed Janjaweed Arab militia that has been accused of massacring civilians during Darfur’s 18-month-old civil war.
“Throughout the time Khartoum was supposedly reining in the Janjaweed, these camps have been operating in plain sight,” the head of the group’s Africa division, Peter Takirambudde said in a statement.
“These Janjaweed camps should be immediately investigated by the UN and the African Union ceasefire monitors, then disbanded.”
Sudan faces a UN deadline of August 30 to restore peace in Darfur or face sanctions.
But Sudan’s government on Thursday defiantly dismissed the deadline for it to disarm the militia, insisting it would resolve the conflict there through ongoing African Union peace talks in the Nigerian capital Abuja.
Asked in Abuja whether Sudan would seek to meet the terms of the UN ultimatum, which is backed by a threat of sanctions, Agriculture Minister Majzoub al-Khalifa said: “Not at all. It’s never crossed our minds or our hearts.”
Human Rights Watch urged the United Nations to impose sanctions on Sudanese government officials for failing to disarm the militia, and called for war crimes investigations of militia members found in the camps.
The Janjaweed shared five of the heavily-armed camps identified by HRW with the Sudanese army, the group said, citing witnesses. The army and police have incorporated militia members in their ranks, it added.
Three of the camps were allegedly opened in July, after Sudanese President Omar El Bashir pledged to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to start disbanding the militia, the group said.
The United Nations estimates that up to 50,000 people have been killed in Darfur since mainly black African rebels rose up in February 2003 against the Khartoum government’s policies in Darfur.
The proxy militia are widely blamed for atrocities against civilians that forced some 1.2 million people to flee their homes to camps in Darfur itself, and up to 200,000 more to equally impoverished eastern Chad, according to the United Nations.