Sudan suspends forcible transfer of people in Darfur camps: AU

El-FASHIR, Sudan, Nov 6 (AFP) — Sudan has suspended its forcible relocation of thousands of people living in camps in the war-torn Darfur region, the African Union (AU) mission said.

Sudanese police bulldoze debris at El-Geer refugee camp near Nyala in the Darfur area of Sudan on Saturday, Nov. 6, 2004. Inhabitants were forced to move to another refugee camp. (AP).

“The exercise was suspended so far,” said Colonel Anthony Amadoh, the chief military observer for the AU Ceasefire Commission in Darfur, adding that the government seemed to have bowed to pressure from the international community and the AU.

“Our forces, our military observers and protection force stepped in when they heard the information and they intervened,” he said.

The policy, which had seen security forces surround camps and force out thousands of people, caused outrage earlier this week, with the United States saying it was in “direct contravention” of United Nations principles regarding internally displaced people and a violation of UN Security Council resolutions on the Darfur crisis.

Thousands of people have died and some 1.4 million people have been forced from their homes in Sudan’s Darfur region, where UN and aid officials say killing and mass rape have become commonplace.

A United Nations mission in Sudan said on Wednesday that government forces had helped eject between 6,000 and 8,000 people from a camp on the edge of Nyala, the capital of South Darfur State.

The French-based Medecins du Monde (Doctors of the World) reported similar incidents on Tuesday, saying security forces had “encircled and emptied” a Darfur refugee camp that housed hundreds of displaced persons.

Police also “fired shots into the air to disperse the refugees who opposed the relocation and at the current time a large part of the camp occupants are without shelter,” it said.

Sudan’s humanitarian affairs ministry defended the move, saying it was aimed at avoiding the spread of disease and improving security in the camps in Darfur sheltering hundreds of thousands of people.

“What happened in Nyala on Tuesday was not a voluntary repatriation but was, rather, a change of one site to a better one long prepared and arranged by the state authorities and the organizations operating in the state,” the ministry said.

Amadoh said the AU was now carrying out “confidence patrols” in the camps to reassure the displaced persons.

“They are reporting everything they see, but so far the tension in those camps have calmed down,” he added.

Amadoh also said that the African Union redeployed more than 200 troops in Darfur on Saturday as part of an effort to enhance the effectiveness of its observer mission in the vast and semi-arid troubled region.

Helicopters airlifted 180 Rwandan and 48 Nigerian troops from bases in el-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur state, to stations in Kabkabiyya west of there, and to el-Geneina, the capital of western Darfur.