Sudanese in Darfur Risk Lives to Speak Out on Atrocities

Nima Elbagir

Reuters, Arab News

NYALA, Sudan, 25 May 2004 — With nothing left to lose, young men made destitute by fighting in Sudan’s Darfur region say they are willing to risk their lives to tell the world about atrocities in their homeland.

African villagers accuse Sudan’s government of arming Arab militias to loot and burn their homes in a proxy war against rebels who last year launched a revolt in the western region.

Khartoum denies the charge. International groups trying to get to the truth and provide aid for the estimated one million people displaced by the conflict are hampered by poor security and government restrictions.

In the regional capital Nyala, police are stationed outside the hospital to prevent foreign aid and rights workers from talking to villagers injured in recent attacks by horseback militias — known as janjawid — on five nearby villages.

“We know that the international community has difficulty in finding the truth so we will take the truth to them,” said 29-year-old Al-Sadig Abdel Rahman Musa in Nyala yesterday. But that can be dangerous work.

Haroun Abdallah said his brother, Suleiman, was gathering information he hoped to send to Amnesty International and even denounced the janjawid in public. Last week he was killed. “We were in the cattle market in the morning and the janjawid rode past and he (Suleiman) shouted at them that what they were doing was wrong... That evening they came to his house and shot him in the head,” said Abdallah.

Many young men in Darfur used to work as drivers but have given up because of an extortion racket they blame on janjawid. Musa says getting the truth out is their only weapon. “I have seen baby boys thrown into boiling water by armed men. I have heard them shout to each other to leave the girls alone unless they are old enough to rape. So we are willing to risk our lives,” he said.

The United Nations says the conflict in impoverished and arid Darfur has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and has compared it to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Fighting in Darfur has continued despite a cease-fire signed between rebels and the government in April. Arab militiamen killed at least 56 people in a raid 50 km south of Nyala on Saturday, villagers said.

Adam Abdullah Ahmed, 29, says he has spent the last three months in and out of jail for trying to speak out about abuses. “If they (the authorities) feel you are trying in any way to tell others (rights organizations) what is going on, they lock you up,” he said.

More than a year after the seeds of its current humanitarian catastrophe were sown, calls for robust international action are finally mounting.

The last week has brought warnings of mass starvation, reminders of widespread human rights atrocities, accusations of cease-fire violations, veiled threats of United Nations sanctions, and a call for international military action.

Monday delivered a rare glimmer of good news, with an announcement by British charity Oxfam that it would expand its operations in Darfur. Oxfam’s somewhat tentative plans followed Khartoum’s announcement last week that it would lift travel restrictions on aid workers in the region.

“I hope this new move will mean that our water engineers can finally get to the Darfur region and to remote communities where people need urgent help,” Oxfam regional director Caroline Nursey said in a statement. Food is one of the most pressing concerns for Darfur’s estimated six million inhabitants, with mass displacement having preventing this year’s crops being harvested before the imminent rainy season.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03.

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