Security in Darfur a farce, says rights group
Human Rights Watch said Sudan will take it as “an all-clear sign” to keep attacking and uprooting villagers if the UN Security Council does not force Khartoum to improve security so 1.5 million people displaced by fighting can return home.
“The danger now is the ethnic cleansing will be consolidated,” Human Rights Watch’s Jemera Rone said in Nairobi. “The current situation where the government says it is providing security is a farce.”
The Security Council, which holds a special session on Sudan in the Kenyan capital on Thursday and Friday, threatened sanctions earlier this year if Sudan did not improve security.
But since then, Sudan has violated the terms of the cease-fire and the spirit of Security Council resolutions that urge greater security in Darfur, Human Rights Watch said in a report released yesterday.
“The government in particular has continued to use helicopter gunships in bombing attacks on civilian objects. Fighting and displacement continue, particularly in south Darfur,” the report says of attacks as recent as October.
Khartoum has defended more recent attacks as legitimate responses to the insurgency.
The report says ethnic cleansing in Darfur consists of “forcibly displacing people, then preventing them from returning home safely” and says government forces raided camps with tear gas to force the displaced to relocate to areas other than their homes.
Sudan has denied it used force in two camp raids this month.
The report also criticised the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) saying they “have abducted civilians, attacked police stations and other government institutions and raided and looted substantial numbers of livestock and commercial goods”.
The SLA is also using male soldiers under the age of 18, but the group told rights investigators they are only used for sentry duty and not combat.
Any UN resolution must be backed up by concrete enforcement that can be carried out against Sudan and the rebels, the New York-based rights group said. Six other aid groups joined in the call.
“Previous UN resolutions on Darfur have amounted to little more than empty threats, with minimal impact on the levels of violence,” said a statement from CARE International, Oxfam International, Christian Aid, Save the Children UK, Tearfund and the International Rescue Committee.
The civil war in Darfur erupted in 2003, when two rebel groups of mostly black Africans rose up against the government they said neglected the west of Sudan.
The United Nations has said it is one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
