Uprooted Sudanese Balk at Invitation to Return Home

[gottaB]

GENEINA, Sudan, May 6 - The governor of this rugged stretch of earth, where the climate and the outlaws are equally harsh, declared Thursday that Darfur was safe again. Speaking in his office in the regional capital of West Darfur, the governor, Sulieman Abdallah Adam, said it was time for the million or so people amassed in makeshift camps across western Sudan, including 23,000 on the edge of this town, to head back to their villages again.

The only problem with his decree is that the displaced villagers know better. They have the wounds to prove that Darfur remains deadly, no matter what the government says. Some of their wounds are fresh, so fresh that they plan to flout the governor's order.

"There is no way I'm going back," Yousif Baraka Dendi said from the Ardamata camp, one of dozens across Darfur. "In one hour I'd be killed. All of us would. You wouldn't see anybody alive."

Crowded around him were hundreds of other black Africans chased off their land in recent months by Arab militias working, at times, in tandem with government troops. The camp dwellers cried out in agreement with Mr. Dendi. If the government brings in trucks to take them back home, they said, they will run, again.

Uprooted Sudanese Balk at Invitation to Return Home....

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[gottaB]

1. Nightmare In The Sand

Time Europe Covers the Darfur Refugees

In western Sudan, civil war has led to an apparent campaign of ethnic cleansing. For the hundreds of thousands of innocents who fled, there are no homes or villages left to go back to.

Nightmare In The Sand....

I'd read that they had some vivid photos, but don't see them posted with that story. The photos accompanying the NYTimes piece are very good, very bright colors. The bbc photo essay is the best so far at showing people's faces. The Human Rights Watch photos, all in black and white, document in stark, clear images the horror of the scorched earth campaign, and the hardships of the refugees.

[gottaB]

2. "A genocide is taking place in Sudan"

Government militias take part in massacres--A humanitarian disaster threatens one million refugees

by Marina Kitchens

Berlin.

A humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in Western Sudan. According to estimates by the UN refugee agency UNHCR, 110,000 people have fled the conflict in the region of Darfur in West Sudan, and gone into neighbouring Chad. Within the wartorn province itself, it is estimated that about one million people have been driven out of their villages. They suffer hunger. Water is scarce. Medical supplies are as good as non-existent. On Friday two UN delegations should brief the Security Council about the situation in Darfur.

Numerous refugees reported, according to UNHCR documents, the killing of civilians and ethnic cleansing. In addition, the Sudanese Air Force bombarded villages. The muslim Jenjaweed militia, tolerated by the army, according to eyewitnesses, stood ready to rape, murder and pillage.

"There are unbelievable violations of human rights that are occuring there," says Amna Al Agib. The human rights activist from West Darfur was just recently in the region in order to get a picture of the situation. "The government wants to settle Arabs in Darfur, therefore it proceeds against the indigenous- and by the way likewise Islamic - black Africans," she says. "A Genocide is taking place."

Similar accusations were also raised by the report which the human right organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) published on Friday. They speak of "ethnic cleansing" in Darfur: of massacres by Sudanese government troops, arbitrary executions, burning down villages-- under the watchful eye or even with the participation of the militias.

"Im Sudan findet ein Völkermord statt".... (In German)

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Also from Germany, but in English: War, Refugees and Hunger instead of Peace

[demdave]

3. Maybe we can et the U.N. to write some more reports about this.

That should clear things up.

[gottaB]

4. I'm disappointed in the UN, sure

Honestly though very few people internationally have taken notice since Kapila issued his warnings two monts ago.

Maybe as more people stop pussyfooting around and call it for what it is, "ethnic cleansing" or "genocide," maybe then people will take notice. One of the problems with weak language like "humanitarian crisis" is that there's almost like this pervasive assumption among Westerners that these people are supposed to wander around in the desert for weeks and weeks and not have homes to return to or food in storage or wells to draw from, like that's just what they do, blow around like tumbleweed until somebody discovers them and calls it a humanitarian crisis. That's the prejudice. I doubt that's what the Security Council had in mind when they chose to water down their language. Perhaps they were genuinely trying to be fair, and also to work with the authorities in Khartoum so that relief aid can be brought in. Then again, the failure to condemn, that was like giving them a pass and may prove to have awful consequences. It's hard to conscience.

So I just don't know. If it seemed like the whole world were up in arms about genocide, like people really found that sort of thing distasteful and unacceptable, then I'd say, yeah, the UN are a bunch of losers. But I'm just not convinced that people truly care about the mass murder of their fellow human beings. Does that reflect poorly on the UN? Pffft.