Sudan: The Passion of the Present

Millions "still at risk in Darfur" - MSF

A "Scotsman" story from Saturday...

(See also a reprint of Dr. Civet's full testimony, provided by MSF [also here].)

THE lives of millions of people displaced by the conflict in Darfur are "hanging in the balance", aid workers warned yesterday [Friday], with the situation in the war-torn region of western Sudan little improved from a year ago.

Despite increasing efforts to bring peace and aid to the region, violence continues and relief is still precarious in many areas with repeated reports of systematic rape, forced relocation, violence against civilians and the burning of villages.

"The humanitarian situation in Darfur today has recently been described as at an 'equilibrium' point, but if you ask the people living in one of the crowded, unsanitary and unsafe displaced camps in Darfur whether they feel they are experiencing an equilibrium, I have no doubt they will more likely tell you that their lives are dangling by the thin thread that is humanitarian aid," said Nathalie Civet, head of mission in Darfur for the humanitarian organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres.

In a briefing to the United Nations Security Council, Dr Civet warned that the situation in Darfur remained far from secure. "The situation is not stabilising in Darfur and the need for humanitarian assistance grows as the conflict continues," she said.

Latest figures suggest two million people now have been displaced by the conflict, with another two million affected by the war.

The number of refugees fleeing across the border into neighbouring Chad has doubled in the last 12 months, while 125,000 are now living in the Kalma refugee camp in South Darfur - up from 25,000 a year ago, MSF said.

"The scorched-earth campaign of 2003-04 has now been replaced by less overt and large-scale, but equally devastating, forms of violence and intimidation of civilians, including the effects of sporadic fighting direct attacks and sexual violence," said Dr Civet.

"In all locations where it provides medical care, MSF continues to receive and treat a significant number of victims of direct violence."

MSF said aid efforts, although late to arrive, have increased significantly over the last 12 months with the number of international non-governmental organisations rising from a handful to approximately 80.

But the humanitarian agency warned that several factors hindered further improvements in the region.

Even in the most easily accessible parts of Darfur the aid effort remains inadequate and precarious, with many people still living in makeshift shelters with insufficient water, food and medical supplies.

Relief levels seen in the larger camps are not apparent in the more remote areas, especially in refugee camps in rebel-controlled areas which aid workers still struggle to reach. Furthermore, MSF said, the continued lack of security was disrupting aid delivery.

"In terms of crude assistance to Darfur, the situation has improved compared with a year ago," said Dr Civet. "But the underlying causes of this crisis remain, and with them, widespread insecurity. In many areas, the situation is deteriorating, both in terms of humanitarian and security conditions.

"Violence resurges in places that have been reported stabilised, while some areas are still beyond sufficient reach. In Darfur today, while the nature of the conflict has changed, the fighting continues.

"People are stuck in camps or in remote areas, subject to violence and to recurring displacement. They are still waiting. Their lives are hanging in the balance, not at equilibrium."

The United Nations yesterday also accused the Khartoum government of doing nothing to tackle sexual violence in Darfur. Although the Sudanese government reacts angrily to accusations that rape is widespread, sexual attacks continue with some involving members of the security forces, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a report.

"The government of Sudan needs to acknowledge the scope of the problem and to take action to end the climate of impunity in Darfur," the report said.

The report evaluated a year-old agreement with the UN in which the Sudanese government pledged to investigate abuses in Darfur immediately and "to ensure that all individuals and groups accused of human rights violations are brought to justice without delay".

While the authorities had taken some steps to tackle sexual violence, charges were still not investigated thoroughly. As a result, every week, more new cases of rape of women and girls are reported," said the report.

Rape victims themselves can face criminal charges when courts decide they cannot prove their case, which discourages women from making accusations. "Arrest, harassment and intimidation of victims of sexual violence and their supporters must end," the report said.

Speaking in New York ahead of the report's release, High Commissioner Louise Arbour said complaints against military and other law enforcement personnel were delayed indefinitely or dismissed outright.

"The government appears either unable or unwilling to hold them consistently accountable," she said.

The Sudanese government in May formed a committee on gender-based violence in South Darfur to assist law enforcement agencies in investigations. Khartoum also has established a special criminal court for Darfur but the report said it was too early to judge its impact.

"To date, most perpetrators have not been brought to justice," the report said.

Sudan’s Darfur-style diplomacy (by Jonathan Karl)

Sudan Tribune reprints this new "Weekly Standard" item...

Condoleezza Rice realized something was wrong when she rushed into Sudan’s presidential residence and found herself sitting virtually alone next to President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir. Her senior staff—including two assistant secretaries of state, Rice’s top policy adviser, and the three-star general who travels with her—had been held at the gate. Bashir’s strongmen had also blocked Rice’s translator.

Sitting next to the president of a country you have accused of genocide is awkward under any circumstances. But imagine sitting there in silence because his people have detained your translator and most of your staff. Bashir speaks no English. Rice speaks no Arabic. And, bizarrely, Sudan’s president did not have his own translator. Instead of her translator and her policy advisers on Africa, the only people with Rice were the two aides who had been riding in the spare limousine: Jim Wilkinson and Liz Lineberry. Wilkinson is a senior adviser, but Lineberry wasn’t even supposed to be in the meeting. She usually waits outside, guarding the secretary’s "baseball"—that is, her purse. In the absence of her usual entourage, Rice told Lineberry to stay.

Inside the meeting, the silence stretched on for several minutes, while outside Rice’s translator, Gemal Helal, was growing irate. No meek foreign servant, Helal is the veteran of years of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and has translated for presidents. And he’s more than a translator; he’s one of Rice’s key advisers on Israeli-Palestinian issues. Finally, Helal started to walk away, directing a profanity at the guards (in Arabic, of course) and telling them that their president would have to meet with the secretary of state without a translator. The guards relented and jammed Gemal into one of Bashir’s cars, rushing him inside the gate and to the meeting.

President Bashir’s security guards were just getting warmed up. The rumble in Khartoum was widely portrayed as an incident involving Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, but long before the guards got around to roughing up Mitchell, they pushed around Rice’s senior staff and several other reporters traveling with Rice. Ray Odierno—the formidable six-foot, five-inch, three-star Army general who orchestrated the capture of Saddam Hussein—had to power his way into the meeting, clearing a path for the two women in Rice’s party (Constance Newman, assistant secretary of state, and Cindy Courville, an NSC official).

This initial scuffle especially irritated senior Rice adviser Jim Wilkinson. Wilkinson managed to get inside, but he had been roughed up on his way. He didn’t stay in the meeting long, coming out to give the guard who shoved him a dose of Texas diplomacy, telling him, "If you touch me again, I’ll knock you on your ass."

Wilkinson usually doesn’t speak on the record, but this time he couldn’t resist. "We frankly don’t appreciate being manhandled at the door," Wilkinson said. "It’s Diplomacy 101: You don’t rough up your guests."

This was not how things were supposed to go. President Bashir used his meeting with Secretary Rice to urge the United States to lift sanctions on Sudan and to reestablish full diplomatic relations (we haven’t had an ambassador in Khartoum since 1997). To the Sudanese, the request seems perfectly reasonable. In fact, just two years ago, Sudan-U.S. relations seemed to be on a fast track toward normalization. The United States was brokering a historic peace agreement to end the country’s two-decade civil war between the North and the South, and Colin Powell was talking about finally getting an ambassador back to Khartoum.

The North-South peace deal was signed last year, but in the meantime the government of Sudan started fighting a rebel insurgency in the western Darfur region by arming the so-called Janjaweed militias. The bloodshed horrified the world and made it impossible for the United States to lift sanctions. Instead of sending an ambassador back to Khartoum, Powell accused the government of genocide.

Because of the North-South peace deal, however, signs of progress slowly became visible. Rice—before her ill-fated meeting with Bashir—was even talking about a "new day" in U.S.-Sudan relations. On July 9, that peace agreement brought rebel leader John Garang and his people into the Sudanese government. This is not quite regime change, but Rice called the government "a changing regime."

Garang may be the most fascinating political figure in Africa today. A 1969 graduate of Grinnell College, Garang has a Ph.D. in economics from Iowa State University. He was part of Sudan’s government until 1983, when he was dispatched to quell a rebel insurgency in the mostly Christian and animist south. Instead of fighting the rebels, he joined them, organizing a more formidable force to challenge Khartoum. In the 1980s, he allied himself with Ethiopia’s Communist government, but for the last decade and a half, he has had strong support from the United States. Garang is now the first vice president of Sudan, a shift in power the United States believes offers the best chance to end the killing in Darfur.

But Rice’s ill-fated meeting with Bashir shows the "changing regime" isn’t changing too fast. At the end of the meeting, President Bashir’s security detail agreed to let American reporters in for a quick photo opportunity with a strict "no questions" rule. When Andrea Mitchell tried to ask a question, she got roughed up and Bashir got a lesson in Public Relations 101: Don’t go pushing around a high-profile correspondent when the television cameras are rolling.

Rice, with a look of stunned disbelief on her face, watched Bashir’s men push the American reporters out of the room. As she was leaving for Darfur, she told the senior American diplomat in Sudan, "I want an apology by the time I land in Darfur."

The diplomat, John Limbert, is one of the 52 Americans who were held hostage for 444 days in Tehran. He passed on the message and, sure enough, a call came to Rice on her airplane 15 minutes before she landed in Darfur. It was Sudan’s foreign minister calling to say sorry—something no Sudanese official has ever said about the killing in Darfur.

Jonathan Karl is senior foreign affairs correspondent for ABC News [U.S.].

U.N. Report Details Rampant Sexual Violence in Darfur

Three new stories related to (most recently) the items in yesterday's "Rape by government forces continues in Darfur: UN":

By Colum Lynch of the "Washington Post"...

Sudanese security forces and other armed groups continue to rape and abuse displaced women in Darfur with impunity, according to a U.N. report on sexual violence in the troubled Sudanese province.

Louise Arbour, the United Nations' high commissioner for human rights, wrote that victims are routinely subjected to humiliating treatment at the hands of the authorities if they say they have been raped. Sudanese police frequently fail to register or investigate sex crimes, and courts sometimes try rape victims as adulteresses if they cannot prove they are telling the truth, she wrote.

"Rape and gang rape continue to be perpetrated by armed elements in Darfur, some of whom are members of law enforcement agencies and armed forces, and the government appears either unable or unwilling to hold them accountable," the 29-page report said. "Many women do not report incidents, out of fear of reprisals, and are discouraged from reporting by the lack of redress for sexual violence."

Sudanese authorities have generally denied allegations that Sudanese forces engage in the systematic practice of rape, according to the report. Senior officials at Sudan's mission to the United Nations did not respond to repeated requests for comment on Arbour's report.

Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice, said the Sudanese government has taken some minor steps to address the crimes, including the establishment of a committee to combat gender crimes and a special criminal court to prosecute alleged war criminals. But she said Khartoum "needs to acknowledge the scope of the problem and to take concrete action to end the climate of impunity in Darfur."

Of the 230 cases of rape monitored by U.N. human rights observers in Sudan's courts, only seven defendants have been convicted of sex crimes. There have been virtually no convictions of Sudanese police or troops for the mass rape of displaced women living in Darfur's camps, Arbour wrote.

Arbour warned Friday that the systematic commission of sexual violence in conflict can constitute a crime against humanity or be used in establishing legal grounds for the crime of genocide. The International Criminal Court is conducting an investigation into such crimes in Darfur.

Arbour said the large-scale killings and abuses that marked the first two years of the conflict between the rebel groups who accused the Arab government in Khartoum with discriminating against the region's black African tribes have decreased. But she said government forces continue to terrorize young women who are forced to leave camps in search of firewood and other necessities.

Arbour cited cases in which rape victims have been denied access to confidential medical treatment to obtain evidence of a crime. In one case, a woman was forcibly taken from a medical clinic to "be repeatedly examined against her will by government doctors," Arbour wrote. "A major obstacle to establishing accountability for sexual violence is the insensitive and often intimidating treatment of victims of sexual violence by the authorities."

By Warren Hoge of the "New York Times"...

Sexual attacks by soldiers, militia members and the police are widespread throughout Sudan's Darfur region, and the authorities often end up accusing the victims rather than investigating the crimes, the United Nations said Friday.

"Rape and gang rape continue to be perpetrated by armed elements in Darfur, some of whom are members of law enforcement agencies and the armed forces," Louise Arbour, the high commissioner for human rights, said in a 100-page report documenting the abuses. "And the government appears unable or unwilling to hold them accountable."

At a news conference on Friday, a day after she briefed the Security Council on her findings, Ms. Arbour said that under current laws, women who bring rape charges "may face prosecution if the prosecution of the rape cases prove unsuccessful."

The report listed a number of cases where that had occurred.

Under Sudanese law, the report said, a pregnant unmarried woman who cannot prove she has been raped can be charged with adultery, a capital crime. To convict a man of adultery, the testimony of four witnesses is required.

The report was an evaluation of a year-old agreement with the United Nations in which the Sudanese government pledged to ensure that individuals and groups accused of human rights violations were "brought to justice without delay." The report concluded that there was instead a broad "climate of impunity."

Sudan's government has protested past allegations of widespread rape, and Ms. Arbour said the authorities refused to acknowledge the problem to such a degree that "the first thing that has to be addressed is for the government to recognize that this is not a fabrication by humanitarian workers."

The report cited an instance when a director of Doctors Without Borders documented 500 cases of rape in Darfur, and the government's response was to charge him with spying. The charges were dropped, the report said, only after the United Nations protested.

The majority of the victims were women and girls from displacement camps attacked as they ventured out to collect firewood or traveled on country roads, the report said. Many were gang-raped by men who arrived on camels and horses.

Many women never report attacks for fear of reprisals or out of the knowledge that redress for sexual violence is unlikely, the report said. Police stations often refuse to register complaints and seldom investigate those they do accept.

"Basically we see extremely, extremely poor results in the investigation and successful prosecution of perpetrators of very serious sexual violence," Ms. Arbour told reporters. "Rapes and gang rapes continue to be very prevalent by all counts."

Ms. Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice who as a war crimes prosecutor indicted Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president, said there appeared to be blanket immunity for members of the armed forces and some collusion among judges to suppress cases. "There's a lot of Ping-Pong between regular courts and military courts, which seems to lead to delay and eventually to nothing," she said.

Asked what her primary recommendation to Sudan was, she said, "It fundamentally starts with a change of attitude and a willingness to recognize the seriousness and magnitude of the problem and then starting to take steps to offer women the kind of security they are entitled to by law."

By Nick Wadhams of the AP, reprinted on Sudan Tribune...

Sudanese police and soldiers continue to rape helpless civilians in Darfur despite government promises to stop them and punish those responsible, according to a U.N. report.

Victims and witnesses are routinely threatened and sometimes even charged with crimes if they come forward with allegations of rape, the report released Friday said. Authorities also intimidate humanitarian groups investigating the claims.

"Many women do not report incidents, out of fear of reprisals," the report said. "Some police stations refuse to register and investigate complaints of sexual violence."

The report was drawn up at the request of Louise Arbour, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. She wanted to assess Sudan’s compliance with promises it made last year to punish those who commit sexual violence against civilians in Darfur.

It said the government has taken small steps — such as creating a committee on gender-based violence — but hasn’t brought offenders to justice on a large scale.

"Basically we see extremely poor results in the investigation and successful prosecution of perpetrators of very serious sexual violence," Arbour told a news conference. "Rape, gang rape and so on continue to be very prevalent by all accounts."

The report said offenders include members of the law enforcement, security forces and pro-government militia, the report noted. Suspects have been tried very rarely, Arbour said.

"We’re talking a handful of cases where we’ve been able to document a successful prosecution," she said.

Sexual violence has been a key problem in Darfur since Sudan’s government allegedly unleashed Arab tribal militia known as the Janjaweed to suppress rebels who took up arms in February 2003.

The campaign of murder, rape and arson has killed 180,000 people, many from hunger and disease, destroyed crops and ruined countless homes. Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice toured Darfur and said "a genocide was committed here." She met privately with female refugees, including some rape victims.

The report called on the Sudanese government to end "the climate of impunity."

Even when women do report sexual offenses, authorities "generally deny the allegations of rape and sexual violence and intimidate the victims and witnesses into withdrawing their charges," the report noted.

In her news conference Friday, Arbour said Sudan’s government had been "extremely unreceptive" about recognizing the magnitude of the problem.

"The government has to acknowledge that this is not a fabrication by humanitarian workers and NGOs and so on," Arbour said, referring to non-governmental organizations who have reported on widespread rape in Darfur.

Women are "preyed upon continually by members of the armed forces, by militias, by soldiers, policemen, people who should be brought under control by the government," Arbour said.

On Thursday, she told the U.N. Security Council that Sudan either can’t or won’t hold rapists accountable.

Earlier this year, the Security Council referred cases of crimes against humanity in Darfur to the International Criminal Court, the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal. Lead prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo suggested in June that rape would be one crime he would pursue.

UN envoy to mediate in Sudan’s Abyei tribal feud

From AFP, reprinted on Sudan Tribune...

UN Sudan envoy Jan Pronk will next week chair a meeting between two tribes locked in a heated territorial dispute over the southern oil-rich region of Abyei, the SUNA news agency reported Saturday.

The Misariyah and Dinka Ngok tribes each claims ownership of the territory and the Misariyah have already angrily rejected the boundaries proposed by an international commission for the district.

Pronk Saturday briefed President Omar al-Beshir on the outcome of a visit he had recently paid to Abyei and said the two sides had shown willingness to sit down together in a meeting under the UN envoy’s chairmanship to discuss their dispute.

The Misariyah are Arab nomads who formed pro-government militias during the two-decade war between Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, while the Dinka Ngok are mainly farmers who sided with the SPLA in the conflict.

Under a January peace deal between the government and the SPLA the district is one of three granted a special status during six years of interim autonomy in the south, leading up to a referendum on independence.

The UN envoy told Beshir that he would return to Abyei next week for the meeting, SUNA said.

Abyei’s fate was one of the main stumbling blocks in years of tortuous negotiations between the government and the SPLA that culminated in the peace deal, under which the south will vote on independence after six years of interim autonomy.

Under an agreement reached in May last year, special provisions apply to Abyei and two other disputed districts on the north-south border — the Nuba mountains and southern Blue Nile state.

It also establishes a formula for sharing out oil revenues from the district and provides for a separate referendum in Abyei in 2011 on whether the district wants to join the north or south.

Abyei was heavily depopulated during the civil war — Africa’s longest-running conflict.

Garang warns Kony

From Uganda's "New Vision"...

Sudanese First Vice- President 1st Lt. Gen. John Garang has given Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels an ultimatum to to leave southern Sudan.

Until Wednesday evening, Garang was a colonel, a rank he has held since 1983 when he deserted the Sudan army.

In an exclusive interview with the New Vision, Garang said he was going to deal firmly with the militias operating in southern Sudan, in order to rebuild the war-ravaged region.

“Kony won’t be hiding there for long. It is not only Kony, but also all the militias who have been operating in the area. We need to provide peace, security and stability, so the militias including those that were formerly supported by the government, must be disbanded.”

Garang flew into the country aboard a chartered plane yesterday for a meeting with president Yoweri Museveni. The meeting took place at Rwakitura in Mbarara.

Garang was met at Entebbe Airport by Vice-President Prof. Gilbert Bukenya and the Minister for Regional Cooperation, Nshimye Sebuturo. He flew to Rwakitura aboard President Museveni’s helicopter.

The former Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) leader, who controlled southern Sudan before the peace deal with the Khartoum Government, said the priority of his government was to resettle displaced people and remove camps of the internally displaced people and return the Sudanese refugees.

He said there were between three to four million Sudanese refugees outside the country who need to be returned and resettled.

He said his government had started rebuilding the infrastructure in the devastated region, which is home to over 12 million people.

Garang said in the next week, the 10 Supervisors for the 10 southern Sudanese states would have taken office to oversee the building of the infrastructure.

The infrastructure to be rebuilt includes roads and railways in southern Sudan and those linking it with Uganda and Kenya, water facilities and financial institutions.

France promises 3.5 million euro boost for Sudan peacekeepers

New from AFP, reprinted on Sudan Tribune...

France will donate an extra 3.5 million euros (4.2 million dollars) to peacekeeping forces in western Sudan, the French foreign minister announced before visiting the world's largest refugee camp in the strife-torn Darfur region on Friday.

Philippe Douste-Blazy made the announcement at the headquarters of the African Union peacekeeping mission in Nyala where French general Marc Delauney briefed him that bandit activity was undermining efforts to stabilise the region wracked by civil war since February 2003.

"The next months will be important in showing if the extra personnel that the mission requires can lower insecurity and improve the political situation," General Delauney, part of a European group advising the African Union, told the foreign minister.

The African Union ambassador in Darfur, Burkinabe's Jean-Baptiste Natama, said the peacekeeping force would need to be increased from 4,000 to 7,000 by the end of August, but the union lacked the resources.

France has so far funnelled 80 million euros (96 million dollars) to Darfur through the African Union.

Douste-Blazy later travelled by muddy tracks to the world's largest refugee camp, Kalma, which houses 100,000 people and is 13 kilometres (8 miles) long and 5 kilometres (3 miles) wide.

A humanitarian worker at the Kalma camp, which houses various ethnic groups and was the scene of riots in May, said lawlessness was a greater problem than food supplies and health.

"The situation is very tense and the refugees can't go more than a kilometre from the camp without the risk of falling victim to robberies and rape, in the case of women, particularly by the Sudanese police," he said.

The war between rebels and government forces supported by Jenjaweed Arab militias has claimed up to 300,000 lives and displaced 2.4 million people, sparking a humanitarian crisis in neighbouring Chad.

Following the US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's visit to Sudan on July 21, the Sudanese government called for negotiations under the auspices of the African Union to be brought forward.

A ceasefire agreed in April 2004 had been generally respected in recent months despite sporadic outbreaks, peacekeepers said.

Africa Action's "Darfur Film Series" (Tuesdays in August)

Taken from the current listings on the Events page...

(All showings start at 6:00 p.m. and will be held at the Institute for Policy Studies, 733 15th Street NW, Suite 1020, Washington, D.C.)

August 2 -- Hotel Rwanda

Eleven years ago, during the Rwandan genocide, over 800,000 people were killed in 100 days. The film Hotel Rwanda provides a shocking visual representation of the brutality of genocide and the heroism of those who resisted. Don Cheadle stars in the true-life story of Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who sheltered over a thousand Tutsi refugees during their struggle against the Hutu militia in Rwanda. The film portrays the consequences of world's refusal to intervene as the massacre unfolded.

August 9 -- Darfur Film Project

After observing the woefully inadequate media coverage on the crisis in Darfur, Sudan, Aisha Bain and Adam Shapiro (students at American University's School of International Service) decided to do something about it. In 2004, the team (with colleague Jen Marlowe) traveled to Sudan and eastern Chad and returned with over 45 hours of footage, along with incredible stories and images. The resulting work in progress is the Darfur Film Project, a documentatary of the testimonies of survivors of the ongoing genocide in Darfur. Come view excerpts from the film and stay for a post-film discussion with the filmmakers. For more information, visit www.darfurfilm.org.

August 16 -- Shake Hands with the Devil

Canadian General Roméo Dallaire was charged with an impossible task: to head the UN peacekeeping mission with a handful of soldiers ordered not to use force to protect Rwandans from the mass slaughter. Shake Hands with the Devil follows Dallaire’s return to the region 10 years later, as he comes to grips with the events that have haunted him — his struggles with top UN officials, expedient Belgian policy-makers and Clinton administration officials who ignored his pleas for reinforcements. The experience led to Dallaire’s own life tragedy as he dealt with the psychological fallout of witnessing a genocide he was powerless to stop. Judging from the current killings in Darfur, Sudan, the ethical dilemmas confronting the international community are as urgent now as a decade ago. Shake Hands with the Devil won the World Documentary Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. For more information, visit www.californianewsreel.com.

August 23 -- All About Darfur

Taking the situation in Darfur as its catalyst, All About Darfur is a contemplative journey of filmmaker Taghred Elsanhouri to the land of her birth at a time of crisis, as she examines the Afro/Arab race dynamic in Sudanese society through the prism of her own experience of race in Britain and Sudan. Darfur is on everyone’s mind from peddlers in the Souk to professors at the University. The film offers a unique opportunity to hear and see Sudanese people articulating in their own words how they feel about the Darfur crisis, about race and politics in their country and about the place and role of the international community in their affairs. All About Darfur won the Chairperson’s Prize at the Zanzibar International Film Festival.

August 30 -- Darfur Film Shorts And Art Exhibit

A Darfur Film Shorts program comprised of brief videos on Darfur and related subjects including Darfur Destroyed, A Good Man in Hell, and a short film on Darfur produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In addition, there will be artwork featured from the collection of Dr. Jerry Ehrlich, a pediatrician practicing in New Jersey, who has collected stunning drawings created by Darfuri children depicting their view of the horrors of genocide and war. These will be on display for your viewing.

Sudanese govt forces attack Shangil Toby in northern Darfur

The "Coalition for Darfur" links to this reprinted DCFHRD press release...

On Sunday 24/7/2005 around 12 pm, government forces attacked the village of Shangil Toby, Northern Darfur. The attack was carried out in response to earlier military action taken against the Government of Sudan forces by rebel groups in the area. In clear breach of all international convention, they carried out their reprisals against innocent men, women and children.

Following the attack, the government used helicopter gunships firing on the main road between al-Fasher and Nyala. Government forces hit villages and burned part of an IDP camp. A number of innocent civilians were killed and injured as detailed below:

Names of the dead civilian victims of this attack:

1. Ahmed Adem Abaker 13 years old
2. Hawa Mohmed Ramdan 26 Years old
3. Ahmed Abdella Abrahim 25 years old
4. Abdella Zakria Hassan 22 years old
5. Fatima Abdella Abdelrahim 35 years old

The injured:

1. Ahmed Adem Jumah
2. Ali Abdelrhman
3. Sulieman Abker
4. Musa Hamid
5. Abdelrhman Hamid
6. Ismael Abdeljabar
7. Abdella Mohmed
8. Dahabiah Abdella Mohmmed

DCFHR[D] also would like to report the kidnapping of two students by the Sudanese Army:

1. Sadieg Ahmed Khatir
2. Noreldien Ismael Khatir

DCFHR[D] strongly condemns the continual random attacks on civilians by both government forces and the rebels. DCFHR[D] calls on the New Government of Sudan to:

Immediately disarm the Janjaweed militias and any other armed militias in the Darfur region.

Immediately cease attacks on civilians and adhere to it commitments under the ceasefire agreement.

Comply with all UN Security resolutions and the UN commission on Human Rights Resolution which explicitly condemns "the continuation of violence against civilians and sexual violence against women and girls".

DCFHR[D] calls on the Rebels to:

Immediately cease attacks on civilians and adhere to it commitments under the declaration of principles in Abuja.

DCFHR[D] calls on the the AU [and the] International Community to:

Strengthen AMIS's mandate to enable and encourage it to undertake all necessary measures, including offensive action, against any attacks or threats to civilians and humanitarian operations, whether from militias operating with the government or from the rebels. Without a stronger mandate, the ability of AMIS -- or any other international force -- to provide protection will remain extremely limited, regardless of its size.

Darfur Centre for Human Rights and Development is an organization established in the U.K in 2004. If you have any questions about this or any other DCFHRD information, please contact the address shown.

How to Contact Us
Darfur Centre for Human Rights and Development
P.O. Box 48299
London, W2 7YG
Phone in the U.K: 07786 984832 or 07930 691575
Phone in the USA: 001 267 992 2004 [Philadelphia]
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.dcfhr.org

CWS's Moses Ole Sakuda Tells Boston Rally to Save Darfur, "We Want to Ask President Bush, Are You Really Serious About Darfur?"

A new press release from Church World Service; links are from the original...

In a rally on Boston's City Hall Plaza on Tuesday (July 26), Church World Service's Moses Olé Sakuda told hundreds gathered to protest U.S. government inaction on the continuing crisis in Darfur, Sudan, "In the last few days we've heard Darfur is getting better. Yet in the last 24 hours we've just heard about more bombing by Sudanese government forces on villages in Darfur."

Visiting the devastated region where more than 300,000 have been killed by government-backed janjaweed militia, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said last Thursday (July 21) "the government of Sudan is not serious about ending the conflict in Darfur." *

But CWS' Ole Sakuda told the Boston rally this week, "We want to ask President bush and his administration the same question, 'Are you really serious about saving/ending the conflict in Darfur? Are you really serious about putting your actions where your words are?'"

The Darfur gathering was led by the Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur and echoes similar grassroots organization advocacy across the U.S. that continue to urge the Bush administration and other world bodies to increase pressure on the government of Khartoum to bring about an end to the year-and-a-half of assault that has displaced more than 2.5 million mostly black African farmers, burned villages, raped and killed.

The situation is being called one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world and has been labeled genocide by the Bush administration.

Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur Co-Chair Kenneth A. Sweder said the coalition was urging more African Union troops on the ground in Darfur and more support from the U.S. and NATO. He acknowledged the Bush administration for its recent appointment of a special envoy to Sudan but said more needed to be done, including efforts to divest funds that support the government of Sudan.

He urged support for the current Bill #2166 in the Massachusetts Senate (requiring divestiture in Sudan).

At the Boston rally, longtime Boston news anchor and humanitarian Liz Walker, who has visited Darfur several times with humanitarian agency Mercy Corps, told the rally crowd, "Each time we go, our hearts are broken more and more. But once you step back up to Khartoum, you are stepping out of an existing hell, and you realize the world goes on . . . as if it (Darfur) doesn't matter.

Walker said "Khartoum bases its entire government policy on knowing the rest of the world does not care and will move on to the next crisis . . . and that 2 million displaced people don't matter and 300,000 dead don't matter."

"It matters," Walker said. "We're here to remind them tonight that it does matter, that rallies matter . . . that standing up matters.

"You count," she told the crowd on the hot City Hall Plaza. "You matter. You matter all by yourself and you matter in continuing with those around you."

Ole Sakuda, a Maasai from Kenya and CWS Mission Relationship and Witness Program Associate Director, frequently travels to Sudan conferring with the agency's faith partners the Sudan Council of Churches, New Sudan Council of Churches and All Africa Conference of Churches on humanitarian needs, programs and church solidarity across the region- including South Sudan, where a flow of refugees is returning after being displaced by the just-ended 21 year conflict between north and south Sudan.

Ole Sakuda told the Darfur rally that CWS calls for justice worldwide, "for women raped everyday and for children who'll never have a chance to be heard. For what affects my neighbor should affect me in one way or another, whether here or abroad and whether I admit it or not. "

Abuk Bak, a former Sudanese slave, told the Darfur supporters that in 1987 when she was 12, Arab militia raided her own village in South Sudan - the same dreaded janjaweed on horseback accused now of burning virtually every village in Darfur, raping, killing and mutilating the predominately black African populace.

She said the militia killed most of the men and took most women and children with them to North Sudan to work as slaves. Bak said, "I worked for a man as a black slave. When I said, 'I'm tired,' they beat me." Saying she was beaten and raped, Bak escaped and eventually was able to come to the U.S.

Liz Walker spoke of meeting many women in Darfur refugee camps who were raped and who had fled to camps to survive.

"Their only crime was being human," said Walker. "When you come back here (to the U.S.), you have no idea how blessed you are."

She commended those at the rally, saying, "your faith and moral outrage has brought you here."

Walker said, "Condoleeza Rice said the U.S. is demanding action not words from Sudan. But now we are demanding action not words from Condoleeza Rice."

Ernest Rugwizanoga, a Rwandan genocide survivor, told the rally of his own experiences. In 1994, learning his home was on the list marked for burning, his family was warned to flee in different directions, "so that if one of us was caught, the others might escape."

Rugwizanoga fled to a concentration camp where 100,000 people were held. After the conflict, he said, "The genocide took three of my siblings, many friends and family members." Rugwizanoga came to Boston in 1997 and now works "with city kids, mostly of color.

"After the genocide," said Rugwizanoga, "I heard people like President Clinton say they should have done something about Rwanda. I was optimistic then.

"I'm not so sure now," he says, "about the people who have power. Violence anywhere is violence everywhere," the young man said.

He spoke of the Dorchester neighborhood where he now lives and how, in recent days, two young men were shot, one on Rugwizanoga's front steps.

"In Dorchester and Sudan," he said, "the violence could have been stopped if the people in command had wanted it to."

Rugwizanoga said, "We want to ask Bush, 'Do we want to be seen as a country who helps people only when there is a dollar to be made there?'"

Boston's Walker said the Darfur advocates want to ask President Bush, "When does 'never again' begin? Bush said 'Not on my watch,'" she said. "Mr. President, when does your watch begin?"

Coalition co-chair Sweder told the group that the coalition was sending President Bush a reminder about his administration's watch for genocide, then held out for the crowd to see a six-foot wristwatch they intend to send to the White House.

Sweder told the Darfur rally, "As a Jew I always took what happened in the Holocaust personally. Today I take what happens to my brothers and sisters in Darfur personally."

Sweder, a Boston attorney and longtime Boston activist, challenged the group and each individual to "make Darfur your passion. You be the one to take Darfur to your church."

He said the coalition looked forward to future Darfur rallies in Boston, New York and "hopefully in Washington," and claimed that a grassroots campaign would have an effect on President Bush.

Massachusetts Senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry and Representative Michael Capuano, in a letter read aloud to rally attendees, sent support for the rally's aims, noting that "Khartoum has continued to rape and kill with impunity."

Church World Service Calls for Broader Authority for AU Troops in Darfur

Church World Service is advocating an increase of African Union monitoring troops in Darfur, chartered with broader authority.

The agency says strengthening the AU mandate is a priority. "There are times when they do not act or act late," says CWS' Ole Sakuda, "because of different perceptions of this mandate. So clarity and a sense of purpose around mandate are critical."

On the continuing rape and killing in Darfur, Ole Sakuda says "The issue here is who will be the powerful voice of the victims of violation, and how do we encourage the AU to tell the true story of what is going on?'

CWS also calls for a need for more police in Darfur, especially more female police, and for voluntary return of uprooted civilians from their homes, in accord with international principles.

CWS also warns of a looming food crisis due to poor security and inaccessibility, current weather conditions and lack of seeds and tools.

CWS just increased its combined fundraising appeal for Darfur and South Sudan to $1.75 million.

CWS issued an initial fundraising appeal for the Sudan-Darfur crisis in 2004, in concert with partners and Action by Churches Together (ACT) members Sudan Council of Churches (SCC), Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) and Caritas Internationalis, a confederation of 162 Catholic relief, development and social service organizations.

CWS and partners have been providing food, medicines, water and sanitation projects, education, agricultural inputs and tools, and counseling programs for Darfur's most vulnerable since July 2004.

CWS' Ole Sakuda says the agency applauds grassroots coalitions such as the Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur for "staying the course and not giving up until the world responds sufficiently and the innocent of Sudan can sleep in peace.

"When people of faith and others rise to the challenge before hand, serious tides have been reversed in the past. Darfur too can be changed and we will all live in a better world, " he said.

At Boston's rally, in a closing a cappella performance by a vocal group from the Boston Women's Network, a line from the song composed by one of vocalists seemed to capture the essence of the event: "Sisters and brothers, I hear your cries on the wind . . . and we are all connected"

For more information about the Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur, visit www.savedarfurma.org.

For more information about Church World Service's support for the people of Darfur and South Sudan, visit www.churchworldservice.org/news/Sudan.

* Source: BBC, Thursday July 21, 2005

U.N. names rights monitors for Sudan, Uzbekistan

New from Reuters...

(See also a related OHCHR press release.)

The U.N.'s top human rights body named two special investigators for Africa's conflict-torn Sudan and Central Asia's Uzbekistan on Friday, both countries the focus of international concern.

The experts are charged with monitoring the human rights situations, leading fact-finding missions, and reporting their findings to the United Nations.

The U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights appointed Sima Samar of Afghanistan as so-called Special Rapporteur on human rights in Sudan.

Samar is the former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Women's Affairs in the post-Taliban Afghan government and now chairs the country's Independent Human Rights Commission, the OCHCR said in a statement.

Earlier on Friday, the U.N. criticised Sudan for fuelling sexual violence in its turbulent Darfur region, where violent clashes intensified after rebels took up arms in 2003.

The government is accused of arming Arab militia, known as Janjaweed, who pillage, kill and rape. It has denied the charge.

At the same time, the U.N. named Michèle Picard of France as the independent expert on the situation of human rights in Uzbekistan.

Picard is expected to prepare a confidential report to the U.N. on the situation in Uzbekistan that will be used to establish a dialogue with the goal of improving rights conditions there, a U.N. OHCHR spokesman said.

In May government troops opened fire on rebels and protesters and, witnesses said, killed 500 people. The government says 169 people died in the May 13 violence, most of them "bandits."

The violence in the tightly-controlled Central Asian state, used as a staging area for the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, has led to concern from the West and stoked opposition fears that it could be used as a pretext for a new crackdown on independent voices.