After visit to refugees, doctors’ group asserts Sudan is practicing
genocide
Says world response needed now in Darfur
The Boston Globe
June 24, 2004
By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Correspondent
The violence in the Darfur region of Sudan includes systematic killings,
rape, pillaging, and destruction of villages that ”are clear indicators
of genocide,” according to a report issued yesterday by Physicians for
Human Rights.
A delegation from the Boston-based advocacy group visited the
neighboring country of Chad last month and interviewed non-Arab refugees
from the Darfur region, who gave firsthand accounts of being assaulted
and chased while their wells were poisoned, livestock stolen, and
villages burned by an Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, working with
the Sudanese government.
”What we determined, based on a number of testimonies, is that there
are clear indicators of genocide,” investigator John Heffernan said.
”The main point here is a consistent program of targeting non-Arabs.”
Under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide, which the United States has signed, any member country is
obligated to stop or prevent genocide if it is identified. The
international genocide convention, adopted in 1948, defines genocide as
actions intended to destroy a racial, national, religious, or ethnic group.
There is widespread agreement that the humanitarian crisis in Darfur
demands urgent action, but a coordinated international response is
coming too slowly for many critics. The physicians’ group said that by
presenting evidence of genocide, it hoped to instigate a more serious
international response.
”Those countries which have signed on to the genocide convention are
committed to prevent and punish those who are perpetrating it,”
Heffernan said.
Darfur has been the center of escalating violence as the Arab-dominated
central government has fought non-Arab rebel groups over the past 18
months. In April, a UN official called the conflict ”ethnic cleansing.”
The physicians’ group’s report noted that non-Arabs were consistently
attacked while neighboring Arab villages were spared. ”The Janjaweed
attacked us, and then the government helicopters attacked us. They want
to attack all the black people in Sudan, so that Sudan will be for the
Arabs only,” a refugee is quoted as saying.
Tens of thousands of people have died, and roughly 1 million people have
been displaced within Darfur. Most of these displaced people lack food,
clean water, and medical care and some are even living in ”prison
enclaves,” according to Heffernan. For the refugees in Chad, those
conditions will only worsen as the rainy season begins, making transport
of food or other humanitarian aid impossible, the report said.
The study outlines assault methods it said were intended to annihilate
the non-Arab group. They cite systematic attacks on villages, using
coordinated air and land forces.
The Arab militia worked with the Sudanese government’s troops to destroy
property and pursued fleeing villagers in order to kill, rape, or rob
them, the report charges.
The report called on the Sudanese government to halt the violence, and
on the international community to intervene.
A spokesman from the United Nations said yesterday that although the
secretary general is not prepared to call the atrocities ”genocide,”
the flagrant human rights violations occurring in Darfur are a major
concern to the UN.
”The idea is not to wait until it gets to that point,” said Jemera
Rome, a Sudan researcher at Human Rights Watch. ”The Security Council
does not need genocide in order to act.”
She said that the UN should invoke its Chapter VII authority of the UN
charter, which permits the Security Council to take all actions
necessary, including sending a military force, to ”maintain or restore
international peace and security.”
The US government has so far not taken a view on whether the violence
amounts to genocide. In a June 11 interview with The New York Times,
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said, ”I’m not prepared to say what
is the correct legal term for what’s happening. All I know is that there
are at least a million people who are desperately in need.”
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Carolyn Johnson can be reached at [email protected]/