Sudan militiamen use rape as weapon of war
The Janjaweed militiamen sometimes torture women and break their limbs to prevent them from escaping rape, abductions and sexual slavery, Amnesty International stated in its report: Sudan, Rape as a weapon of war in Darfur.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than a million of Darfur's 6.7 million have fled their homes in the face of attacks by the Janjaweed or "men on horseback" in the local dialect who allegedly are backed by Sudan's government.
The Janjaweed "are happy when they rape. They sing when they rape and they tell us that we are just slaves and that they can do with us how they wish," a 37-year-old victim, identified as A, said in the report.
At the weekend, Sudan ordered that committees of women judges, policemen and legal consultants investigate rape accusations and help victims through criminal cases in Darfur, a region the size of Iraq.
UN officials, rebels and refugees have accused Sudan's government of backing the Janjaweed with aircraft, helicopter gunships and vehicles in a campaign equated with ethnic cleansing.
The government denies any involvement in the attacks. While the Arab militiamen have routinely killed black African men and torched hundreds of villages, they have also systematically targeted women and girls for sexual violence, some as young as eight, the Amnesty report says, citing hundreds of interviews in camps in neighbouring Chad sheltering 200,000 refugees from Darfur.
"Women and girls are being attacked, not only to dehumanise the women themselves but also to humiliate, punish, control, inflict fear and displace women and to persecute the community to which they belong," the London-based rights group said.
"In many cases the Janjaweed have raped women in public, in the open air, in front of their husbands, relatives or the wider community," the group said. "The suffering and abuse endured by these women goes far beyond the actual rape... survivors face a lifetime of stigma and marginalisation from their own families and communities." Darfur's troubles stem from long-standing tensions between nomadic Arab tribes and their African farming neighbours over dwindling water and agricultural land.
Those tensions exploded into violence in February 2003, when two African rebel groups took up arms over what they regard as unjust treatment by the government in their struggle with their Arab countrymen.
The United Nations estimates that up to 30,000 people have been killed in Darfur, but some analysts put the figure much higher.
The death toll could surge to more than 350,000 if aid does not reach more than two million people soon, the US Agency for International Development has warned.
Pressure has mounted on Sudan to end the slaughter.
The latest peace talks ended prematurely on Saturday with the rebels walking out, saying that the Sudanese government must firstly disarm the Janjaweed before any resumption.
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