Sudan’s Darfur displaced camp rife with violence

By Opheera McDoom

KALMA CAMP, Sudan, Dec 17 (Reuters) – Zeinab Daoud went out to fetch firewood with five other girls as usual but this day was different. Two men on camels charged the group, separated her and then her ordeal began.

A Sudanese boy runs while playing at the al-Sereif refugee camp in the outskirts of Nyala in the southern Darfur region. (AFP)

Daoud, 20, sat uncomfortably on a chair knocking her bony knees together in the Kalma displaced camp in Sudan’s Darfur region. “They grabbed me and beat me and then..” she stammered, surrounded by her family and onlookers.

“Don’t be afraid,” her older brother urged her. “Tell them everything.”

Rape is a taboo subject in this conservative Muslim society. It is considered shameful for a woman and often remains secret.

“They raped me. They both did,” Daoud managed to spit out, looking away at the dusty ground. “They were Arabs — they wanted to know where my father took his cattle.”

Prodded by her family, Daoud described her half-hour nightmare where the two men beat her with sticks, spat on her, raped her and told her to go back and tell the people in the camp they would come and take their cattle and money.

Non-Arab rebels took up arms in Darfur early last year accusing the Khartoum government of neglect and of using nomadic Arab militias, known as Janjaweed, to loot and burn non-Arab villages, steal their cattle and drive them off their land.

Khartoum admits mobilising some militias to fight the rebels but denies links to the Janjaweed, calling them bandits. During the fighting more than 1.6 million have fled to wretched camps.

Most of those in Kalma have lost their cattle and any hope of returning to their farms. People struggle to find food and water for themselves let alone any animals they managed to save.

A rare clearing among the sprawl of makeshift shelters was dotted with dead animals. The rotting corpse of a donkey lay metres away from where children played football.

Daoud went to the camp hospital twice with her family, but could not find a doctor. “Now this woman gives me medicine. I don’t know what it does.” she said.

“It will be hard for me to get married now,” she said wistfully. “Men want a good woman. I am used.”

Throughout Africa, rape is used as a weapon of war. In Sudan, where Arab North Africa meets sub-Saharan Africa, the crime is difficult to prove under Islamic law.

The government’s humanitarian aid commissioner told Reuters there were only a few rape cases reported to the police and documented in South Darfur state. “Only slight … seven, 10, 14 maybe … but not as many as the media make out,” he said.

Rights groups accuse the police of refusing to file reports of rape and the government of ignoring a widespread problem.

Asked if she had filed a police report on the attack, Daoud and the others fell silent.

“Don’t even ask that question. These police rape our sisters in the camp … They are our enemies,” one man burst out.

JANJAWEED IN CAMP

Many of the displaced in Kalma feared the 300 police deployed to protect the more than 100,000 people in the camp as much as they feared the Janjaweed.

“The leader of the Janjaweed — he is now one of the leaders in the police here,” said al-Tayyib Mohamed Ahmed, a camp community leader.

At night, residents say they hear gunfire in the camp near to the central market place and cower in flimsy shelters or slip into holes they dig in the ground to avoid stray bullets.

“They, the Janjaweed, shout we should leave this country — we, the Africans. But we will not,” Halima Ismail al-Nur said. She was 25 but her stick-like limbs, bloated belly and wizened face made her look around 40.

They killed two people last Sunday, she said.

The government says it has deployed 6,000 extra police to Darfur to try to stop the attacks on the displaced.

“The police do nothing, they also come in shooting. We hear their machine guns,” Nur said.