We are dying in Darfur

By Dudley Conneely, a former Maryknoll missioner who is project director for Save the Children-USA. He lives with his
wife Mary in Bolivia. They have eight children.

Sep 01, 2005 - Emboldened by the struggle of the Sudan People's Liberation Army in southeastern Sudan, some African tribesmen in the western region of Darfur have taken up arms against the Khartoum government. The Arab leaders have been trying to enforce Islamic law on the entire nation, even though 30 percent of the people are non-Muslim. In Darfur, the government armed the fierce Janjaweed nomads as a militia to put down the uprising. The Janjaweed, who had historically abused the African tribes people, took their new role as a license to indiscriminately rape and murder their neighbors. The following account was written by a relief worker in Darfur.

The elderly chief of the displaced persons camp told me, "We are dying in Darfur!" He asked me to tell the world about it. Before our Save the Children USA team arrived in western Sudan, more than 70,000 people from African tribes were murdered by the government-supported militia. This brutal slaughter of innocent people continues, but, thank God, much less frequently because of foreign observers in the area. The international media has made the world aware of the Darfur massacres, but as far as I can see, nothing serious has been done to stop the violence.

Not even the children are spared. When our Save the Children team, with whom I have been working here for the past five months, visited one of the Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps on the Chad border, the camp chief singled out a 14-year-old girl who looked tired and depressed. He led us behind a tree, away from the crowded camp, and asked the girl to tell me her story through a translator.

She reported how the Janjaweed (the government-armed militia) horsemen rode into her village before dawn. Her father ran outside to protect his family. Her mother took her children to the back of their grass hut and huddled in the corner. The girl knew what was happening. At certain times of the year, for as long as she could remember, the Janjaweed nomads would raid, stealing what they wanted and allowing their camels and cattle to graze on the crops before harvest, but it was never like this.

The raiders threw torches into the village huts. The young girl heard gunshots and the screaming and wailing of men and women. Then three Janjaweed militia entered her hut, dragging her father who was bleeding from wounds. They raped the girl and her mother. The atrocity did not stop there. One of the horsemen took his sword, placed it on the coals of the fire, stripped the girl to her waist and branded her as if she were cattle. He laughed, telling her now she was marked for life as Janjaweed property. On their way out, they murdered her father with one shot to the head.

The village girl didn't have to cry. Her sunken eyes expressed excruciating pain. She spoke of now being an outcast in her village, of never being able to have a husband or children of her own. No man would want her. She was stigmatized, marked for life with the hot iron of the Janjaweed.

I tried to find words of comfort, to have the translator assure her that we would help, that all was not lost. I told the girl that in a camp support meeting for women victims like her, I recently heard a young mother share her story with her peers. This woman's husband had been killed in front of her, she and her sisters had been raped and her village burnt. The Janjaweed, after massacring her family and the families of her neighbors, snatched her 3-month-old baby from her breast and threw him into the blazing fire that was once her home. She tried to enter to save her infant, but the Janjaweed blocked her way with their horses. She begged and screamed at her family's assassins to kill her too, that she no longer had anything to live for. They just laughed and left behind her shattered soul—her life virtually destroyed.

I told the girl that although the young mother still suffers from her nightmare experience, she also has been able to join other women, who with the help of our trained female staff try to help each other overcome their trauma and integrate into their communities. I told her that there are such meetings being held in a provisional women's center right here in this IDP camp, and I asked the chief to help her become a member of the group.

Finally, I explained that she should not worry about being an outcast. The very high number of girls and women who have suffered from being brutally raped has changed the way the community thinks about innocent women being violated and how they should be accepted.

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