Powell gives chilling accounts from Darfur refugees to back genocide label
WASHINGTON, Sept 9 (AFP) — “We kill all blacks and even kill our cattle when they have black calves. This is not your homeland.”
“Slaves, run. Leave the country. You don’t belong; why are you not leaving this area for the Arab cattle to graze?.”
“This place belongs to Arab tribes. Blacks must leave.”
These were among harsh threats made to black Africans by Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, as they went on a rampage in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region, killings tens of thousands of people and uprooting 1.4 million others, the US State Department said.
The government in Khartoum has been accused of arming and backing the Janjaweed, an Arab term meaning “horse and gun.”
US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who called the atrocities genocide, submitted a report to a Senate hearing Thursday containing the accounts of black African refugees fleeing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
The report documented some of the interviews with 1,136 randomly selected refugees in 19 locations in eastern Chad, Sudan’s neighbor.
Powell said US evidence from the interviews on refugees and other sources showed that the “Janjaweed and Sudanese military forces have committed large-scale acts of violence, including murders, rape and physical assaults on non-Arab individuals.”
Three-fourths of those interviewed reported that the Sudanese military forces were involved in the attacks.
About two thirds reported aerial bombings against the villages and witnessed the killing of one family member, according to the report “Documenting Atrocities in Darfur.”
One third heard racial epithets while under attack, one quarter witnessed beatings and large numbers reported the looting of personal property and theft of livestock, it said.
Sixteen percent of those interviewed said either that they had been raped or had heard about a rape from a victim.
One woman said she had been “raped repeatedly” in front of her father by members of the Sudanese military and Janjaweed.
Afterward, her father was dismembered in front of her.
Another woman recounted how five Janjaweed men held her for a week against her will and repeatedly raped her in front of her nine-month old daughter.
“At one point, the woman was allowed to pick up the crying baby. When the baby continued to cry, one of the men grabbed her and hit her with the butt-end of a rifle,” the report said.
The mother and child escaped and made their way to a refugee camp in southern Chad.
The State Department said numerous credible reports corroborated the use of racial and ethnic epithets by both the Janjaweed and government military.
“Kill the slaves; Kill the slaves” and “We have orders to kill the blacks” are common, the report said.
Refugee accounts also point to mass abductions, including persons driven away in government vehicles but respondents usually did not know the abductees’ fate. Some spoke of mass executions and gravesites.
One woman living in a refugee camp with her two-year-old daughter and husband said her four-year-old child had been missing since her village was bombed by an aircraft and attacked by ground forces.
“When ground forces set fire to the homes, helicopter gunships shot at villagers trying to escape,” she said, adding that she was able to flee with only one child.
“You try to take all your children with you but sometimes you can’t and have to quickly decide to take one or two of them. You hope that those able to run will follow you.”