Bush condemns Darfur 'genocide'

Washington -
United States President George Bush on Wednesday said that "genocide has to be stopped" in western Sudan, and that involvement by Nato should send a "clear signal" of the West's intent.

In unusually candid remarks on a range of international issues, Bush answered questions after a speech on Iraq at Freedom House in the nation's capital.

"This is serious business. This is not playing a diplomatic holding game... When we say genocide, that means genocide has to be stopped," Bush said. Read the rest >>>

Speaking out against genocide

Activist Brian Steidle will raise awareness of the turmoil in the Darfur region of Sudan at two local events Sunday
By Nicole Lee


What began as an assignment to document the turmoil in Darfur (an area in western Sudan, Africa) has become Brian Steidle’s mission. He now travels across the country discussing what the U.S. government has publicly called genocide in hopes of raising public awareness to stop the killing. Read more >>>

Rabbi Meets Genocide's General

A close-up of Sudan's chief mass murderer and his genteel, cultivated entourage
by Nat Hentoff

Refugees fleeing . . . from a village called Saleya described how nine boys were seized by the janjaweed, stripped naked and tied up, their noses and ears cut off and their eyes gouged out. They were then shot dead and left near a public well. From the continuing reports from Darfur by Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times

I have wondered what it would be like to be in the presence of Sudanese president General Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the apprentice Hitler of our time, who is responsible for the genocide in Darfur, which is very likely to surpass the Rwanda genocide in the number of slaughtered corpses. Rwanda's atrocities lasted less than a year, but Darfur's started in 2003, and in addition to the killings, more than 2 million black Africans have been displaced from their razed homes and villages. Click here for the full story >>>

Darfur: 21st century holocaust

About half a million innocent civilians have been slaughtered over the past 3 years. Other three million have been displaced from their homes either as refugees under squalid conditions in the neighboring countries or as internally displaced persons who constantly face Khartoum regime’s abuses. Read more >>>

Conference helps to remember Holocaust

Staff Writer

This week, West Lafayette is hosting its 25th annual Holocaust Remembrance Conference, designed to educate people about the events that took place decades ago. Such remembrance conferences are important, because they help us to never forget the heinous, embarrassing parts of human history.
However, many people tend to believe that such horrible instances of genocide and ethnic cleansing are all in the past and could never happen again. So it's important to realize that, even today, millions of people are being killed in large numbers due to genocide.

For example, in Dafur, Sudan, it is estimated that about 400,000 people have lost their lives due to genocide, and thousands more are dying every month (darfurgenocide.org). About 1.3 million people in Darfur and Chad have been displaced, and many have been put in concentration camps. For more click here >>>

Act now to stop the genocide in Darfur

Slaughter in Sudan must be countered before it spreads

If the world waits much longer to stop the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, there may be no one left to save.

Already, more than 400,000 black African Muslims have been slaughtered by gangs of Arab janjaweed militias, acting at the behest of the Sudanese government. Thousands more have been displaced and are now packed into disease-ridden refugee camps. Mass rapes have devastated the girls and women of Darfur. Read more >>>

Darfur attacks overwhelm peace force, UN reports

The UN special envoy to Sudan says that violence is rising in Darfur and that lack of progress in the south is jeopardizing a peace agreement that ended a separate conflict there.

The official, Jan Pronk, told the Security Council on Tuesday that killings, rapes and armed attacks on Darfur villagers were committed by armed gangs secure in the knowledge that no one would stop or punish them. The full story >>>

African church leader says Darfur can't wait 6 months for U.N. troops

by Fredrick Nzwili Ecumenical News International

NAIROBI - Sudan's deeply troubled Darfur region desperately needs a truly international peacekeeping force, and cannot wait another six months to get it, the Rev. Mvume Dandala, general secretary of the All Africa Conference of Churches, has told the African Union (AU).

Dandala charged that the AU peacekeepers there too often defer to the wishes of Khartoum.

"Like the rest of the world, we are appalled by the horrendous, disturbing and continuing loss of human life and livelihoods in Darfur," Dandala said in a March 23 letter to AU Chairman Denis Sassou-Nguesso, the president of Congo Brazzaville, and Omar Konari, chairman of the African Commission. Read more >>>

UNSC authorises Darfur peacekeeping plan

The United Nations Security Council has authorised preparations for the deployment of a peacekeeping mission in the Darfur region of Sudan.

The resolution, which was adopted unanimously, asks the Secretary General, Kofi Annan, to prepare a range of options for a UN operation in Darfur.
The full story >>>

Continue to write about Darfur crisis

Billy Thompson
Boca Raton

The humanitarian issue of Darfur is a crisis that has reached epic proportions. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, along with President Bush, has declared this to be modern-day genocide. Read more >>>

Never again...for the fourth time

By: Michelle Singerman

The genocide in Darfur is escalating. To date, the number of murders is estimated at 400,000 people with another three million displaced.

International governments' continued failed responses contribute to the climbing casualties. Similar to previous genocides, nations around the world have blinders on, and focus only on their internal affairs. The world's inaction has permitted the perpetrators to continue achieving their genocidal intent. The full story >>>

Stop another holocaust

Close to a million people were killed in Rwanda in 1994 when the dominant Hutus turned against the Tutsis. The slaughter that went unchecked should have ensured that at the first signs of genocide the United Nations would act to prevent yet another human tragedy.

Not so. Genocide has been proceeding in the Darfur region of Sudan as if there had never been a commitment by the international community to make the vow "Never Again," after the Jewish Holocaust, mean something. To date, the United Nations has shrunk from its responsibility to intervene and the United States, overstretched in Afghanistan and Iraq, is in no position to act unilaterally. Read the entire editorial >>

UN: 'Darfur is unravelling'

Brussels -

Sudan's strife-torn region of Darfur is unravelling and two million people there are increasingly vulnerable to human rights abuse, the UN envoy on genocide warned on Wednesday.

"No one disputes that the situation on the ground is unravelling, it's getting worse," Juan Mendez, special adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the prevention of genocide, said.

"The almost two million Darfurians who were vulnerable to human rights violations are more vulnerable now than they were a year ago," he said. The full story >>>

Darfur: Increasing violence forcing international humanitarian agencies to withdraw

International humanitarian agencies may be forced to withdraw from Darfur because of an escalation in violence, GOAL warned today.

Hot on the heels of a UN report outlining a sharp deterioration in the security situation in the troubled Sudanese province, GOAL's CEO, John O'Shea, warned:

"The world may soon witness another Rwanda-style genocide." Click here for more >>

The silence of bystanders

By Nicholas D. Kristof is a New York Times columnist.

I saw a lot of heartbreak on my latest visit to the fringes of Darfur: two orphan boys living under a tree after their family was murdered, a 13-year-old girl shot in the chest and a six-year-old boy trying desperately not to cry as doctors treated shrapnel wounds to his leg. But the face of genocide I found most searing belonged to Idris Ismael, a 32-year-old Chadian. Idris said that a Sudan-sponsored Janjaweed militia had attacked his village, Damri, that very morning. He had managed to run away. But his wife, Halima, eight months pregnant, could only hobble. And so she was still in the village, along with their four children, ages 3 to 12. ''The village is surrounded by Janjaweed, with civilians inside,'' Idris said. ''There's no way for people to escape. The Janjaweed will kill all the men, women and children, take all our blankets and other property, and then burn our homes. They will kill every last person. The Janjaweed will rape and kill my family, and there's nothing I can do.'' The full story >>>

Hillary Clinton to Bush: Send Military to Darfur

2008 presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, who says she was misled into voting for military intervention in Iraq, now wants the U.S. Air Force to lead an international coalition to stop the genocide in Darfur.

Mrs. Clinton, whose husband did nothing to stop the 1994 Rwandan genocide, sent a letter to Bush on Thursday where she urges:

"The United States can and must do more." Clinton then adds helpfully: "Below are 13 ways in which you can take action." Read more >>>

Darfur genocide demands immediate global attention

By Brandon Guichard, regular columnist

In 2004, Colin Powell called the turmoil in Darfur the “worst humanitarian crisis” we face today. Two years later, and the issue hasn’t moved from the back burner of either American or international politics. Thus far, the global reaction to the chaos in Sudan’s southwest province of Darfur has consisted of little more than sympathetic rhetoric and talk of action. The failure, humanities failure, to respond has been recently described as a challenge to “the conscience of our country” and of the world. Read more >>>

Darfur: Rape; Attempted Rape; Risk of Death Penalty

SOAT
Sudan Organisation Against Torture

On 07 March 2005, two armed militias in military uniform attacked four girls from Seraif IDP camp, Hay AlGeer, West Nyala, Southern Darfur. The girls were attacked whilst collecting firewood outside the camp at 11:30. During the attack, one of the men assaulted one of the girls and attempted to rape her. The armed man touched the girl’s breasts and attempted to forcefully remove her underwear. When she resisted, the man began to beat her. In defence she grabbed a knife that she had been using to cut the firewood and stabbed the attacker in the stomach. The details of the girls are as follows: Read the details >>>

Darfur: Attacks on Tibon IDP camp and Villages in Jebel Marra

SOAT
Sudan Organisation Against Torture

On 15 March 2006, armed forces with land cruisers and armed militias on horses and camels, allegedly the Janjaweed militias numbering more than 900 attacked and looted Tibon IDP camp in Jebel Marra, West Darfur. The militias also attacked three other villages on the same day, Daya, Turra and Kindo in Jebel Marra. During the attack, approximately 26 internally displaced persons (IDPs) were killed and 6 wounded. The injured IDPs have not been able to receive medical treatment. There are currently no medical clinics in Jebel Marra due to the departure of humanitarian organizations in February 2005 on account of the deterioration in the security situation in the area.

The details of the persons killed and wounded are as follows: Read the full details >>>

Tied to terror?

W.Va. pensions find way to rogue regimes
By Joe Morris


West Virginia’s public pensions may have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in companies doing business with terrorist-sponsoring countries.

According to an analysis conducted for the Sunday Gazette-Mail, 55 stocks in state pension portfolios belong to companies that have ties to the governments of Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan or Syria.

The U.S. State Department has designated all these countries as state sponsors of terrorism and barred U.S. businesses from conducting operations there, but foreign companies are under no such constraints. Read more >>>

Senior US Congresswoman Calls for End to Darfur Genocide

By Catherine Maddux
Washington

U.S. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, who recently returned from a fact-finding mission to Sudan's conflict-ridden Darfur region, has made a strong appeal for an end to what she called the "genocide" in Darfur. Ms. Pelosi called for the appointment of a U.S. envoy for Sudan.

Congresswoman Pelosi recently led a congressional delegation to Darfur. In remarks Friday, she described the devastating conditions for tens-of-thousands of displaced people in the region. The full story >>>

Sudan facing fresh charges of genocide in Darfur

SUDANESE government forces massacred their own citizens in a mosque in Darfur, according to fresh evidence presented by the African Union.

The AU, which is attempting to keep the peace in the devastated region, sent monitors to the town of Tawilla to investigate reports of a massacre last September.

A confidential AU report, obtained by The Scotsman, reveals that four people were killed and 24 injured.

It came to light as human rights organisations criticised the Sudanese government for its continued attempts to prevent the United Nations from taking over the peacekeeping role in Darfur, where upwards of 400,000 people are believed to have been killed in genocidal attacks. Read more >>>

DARFUR: UN REPORTS DEADLY ATTACKS IN WEST

The United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) has announced that it has received various reports about a series of deadly attacks in West Darfur over the past week. Around 1,000 unidentified militants, travelling in motor vehicles and on camels and horses, reportedly attacked a village and killed eight people and stole livestock, the UN said in a statment released at its New York headquarters. Full story >>>

Darfur ceasefire crumbling, wider crisis looms

(CWNews.com) - The International Crisis Group, a global conflict watch group, has said the Darfur ceasefire is in tatters, and described the international strategy for dealing with the crisis through the small Africa Union Mission on Sudan as having reached a the dead end. Read more >>>

Raising a Million Voices for Darfur

By Christopher Hayes

Aerial photos from Darfur show the scope of devastation.

Right now, hundreds of thousands of people who have fled the Sudanese government’s genocide in Darfur are packed into camps along both sides of the border with Chad. Mortality rates inside the camps are already shockingly high, since the Sudanese government restricts the amount of food aid groups can bring in. Recent reports indicate that the Janjaweed—the Arab militias who have carried out much of the genocide in the region—are now crossing into Chad along with Sudanese troops to attack the camps and villages. All this comes despite the presence of 7,000 African Union troops and a putative ceasefire. Read more >>>

Darfur, more than a conflict

It is genocide.î That is, at least, how Mukesh Kapila, the outgoing UN humanitarian coordinator in Khartoum, describes the fighting in the Darfur region of western Sudan.


"The only difference between Rwanda and Darfur now is the numbers involved,î says Mukesh Kapila, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, who was in Rwanda when the 1994 genocide occurred. Read more >>>

Women in Darfur Look to ICC

The court may offer the only hope for many rape victims to see justice done.

By Christine Butegwa in Nairobi

If you are a woman in the Darfur region of Sudan who has been raped and you want to lay a charge, it is virtually certain that legal officers will automatically reduce your allegation to one of assault. If you persevere with your rape accusation, you will be told to do the impossible and provide four male witnesses to support your charge.

As a result, sexual violence goes almost totally unpunished and is one of the biggest violations of women's rights in Darfur. It is why members of
the Darfur Consortium, a group of African civil society and women's rights organisations, have high hopes that the new International Criminal Court in The Hague will be able to change the situation. Read more >>>

U.N. Says Thousands in Darfur Have No Food

U.N. Official: Violence Leaves Thousands in Darfur Without Food and Facing Death and Disease

Increasing violence has left hundreds of thousands of civilians in Sudan's Darfur region without food and facing the prospect of widespread disease and death within weeks, the U.N. humanitarian chief said Monday.

Jan Egeland said he fears that Darfur is returning to "the abyss" of early 2004 when the region was "the killing fields of this world." Since that time, he said, the U.N. humanitarian operation in the region has succeeded in saving lives. The full story >>>

Bad to Worse in Darfur

by Eric Reeves

If you thought the situation in Darfur couldn't get any more dire, think again. True, things are already terrible: Some 400,000 Darfuris have perished; more than two million have been driven from their homes to squalid and dangerous camps; and the United Nations estimates that altogether roughly four million people in the region need humanitarian assistance. Click here for the full story >>>

Bush's turn on genocide: He has a chance to succeed where Clinton failed

Survivors of the 1994 Rwanda genocide often recall that when the killing started they comforted themselves with the belief that the nations of world, led by the United States, would come to their rescue.

But the nations never came. They stood by, eyes wide open, as a militant Hutu government systematically slaughtered nearly a million members of the Tutsi minority and Hutu moderates. The United States, under President Clinton, had full knowledge of the machete-wielding militias that were killing an average of 8,000 Rwandans daily and even had intelligence information that could have stopped the mass killings before they began. Yet Clinton did nothing and even worked to block the United Nations from sending additional peacekeeping troops.

Twelve years later, the people of Darfur are wondering when the nations of the world, led by the United States, will come to their rescue. Read the full editorial >>

Darfur's turn for the worse

The African Union votes Friday on whether to let the UN take command of its military forces in Darfur.

By Dan Morrison | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

NYALA, SUDAN – The situation in Sudan's Darfur region, already considered to be the world's most complex humanitarian emergency, is expected to worsen this year before it gets any better.
Troubles are mounting on many fronts. Attacks on non-Arab villagers by Arab militias continue. Aid workers say their stores of grain and other essentials for the region's 2.8 million people who rely on food aid are nearly depleted. The conflict has spread into neighboring Chad. The full story >>>

Massacres suspect let into Britain

By Hala Jaber

A SENIOR Sudanese security official blamed for massacres in the Darfur region of the country was allowed into Britain for medical treatment last week.
Salah Abdallah Gosh, director of the national security and intelligence service in Khartoum, obtained a British visa even though a United Nations panel has recommended that he and 16 other officials be banned from travelling abroad.The rest of the story >>>

Rural populations at risk as Darfur violence escalates

Source: IRIN


NYALA, 9 March (IRIN) - As the security situation throughout Darfur deteriorates, the civilian population - especially in rural areas - continues to suffer the brunt of the violence.

According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), around 1.7 million people in rural communities and host populations are either sharing dwindling resources with those who have been displaced or suffered loss of livelihoods due to social and economic collapse. The entire story >>>

Stunning photographs show the horror of genocide in Darfur

Former U.S. monitor is touring Bay Area to appeal for action
Jim Doyle, Chronicle Staff Writer


Brian Steidle, a former Marine captain, enjoyed photography as a lark. Then he began shooting images of genocide in Sudan. Now he recalls the awful buzz of flies in a village that was looted and burned after its inhabitants were killed.

As a U.S. representative to the African Union peacekeeping mission, Steidle had access to certain areas of Sudan's troubled Darfur provinces that are restricted to journalists. The Sudanese government reluctantly allowed him to be a witness.The full story >>>

U.S. must work to halt Darfur genocide

By Michael Capuano

We look back on the Holocaust and wonder how the world stood by while 6 million Jews were slaughtered. Never again, we pledged. Yet in 1994, 1 million Rwandans were massacred. Afterward, we declared it genocide and pledged never again. Many leaders later expressed deep regret over our inaction. The rest of the picture >>>

As Rainy Season Nears, Darfur Faces "Perfect Storm" of Human Destruction

Collapsing security, funding shortfalls, humanitarian evacuations, growing violence in Chad, looming war in Eastern Sudan---and political dithering by international community

Eric Reeves

The Economist (UK) began a recent news analysis with an appropriately blunt question:

“The mayhem in Darfur, in western Sudan, where some 400,000 people may have been killed and 2 million-plus displaced, is worsening. The misery is spreading west into neighbouring Chad, unhinging that country and threatening a proxy war with Sudan. What can be done?” (“Chaos in western Sudan is threatening to engulf neighboring Chad” [dateline: N’Djamena, Chad], The Economist, March 2, 2006). The full story >>>

Groups threatening U.N. and U.S. interests in Sudan

Sudanese students demonstrate, reject U.N. troops07 Mar 2006 13:27:20 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Opheera McDoom and Jilan Sherif

KHARTOUM, March 7 (Reuters) - About 200 Sudanese students demonstrated on Tuesday urging the United Nations to leave their country and calling it a colonial force, days ahead of a decision to deploy U.N. troops to the violent Darfur region.

Tuesday's protest outside the U.S. embassy in Khartoum followed unconfirmed reports in a pro-government newspaper of new Islamist groups threatening U.N. and U.S. interests in Sudan, and rejecting the presence of any U.N. soldiers in Darfur. Full story >>>>

Darfur's Genocide Continues; The World Dawdles

By Lawrence Uniglicht

The human species, bereft of soul, vacillates as Arab janjaweed Muslim monsters, at the behest of a fascist Wahhabi driven fanatical Sudanese government, perpetrate genocide on helpless Black African Muslims within the hellhole Darfur region of Sudan, a fundamentally flawed fossil fuel drenched savage Islamic sovereignty, led by the aforementioned sadistic racist psychopaths, hellacious robed hindquarters cynically squatting on the ‘oil for food’ scandalized Kofi Annan led Kafkaesque United Nation’s Commission on Human Rights. Shame on the swaggering White House Texan for talking the talk, yet not bullying enough boots on the ground to walk the merciful walk ceasing a horrific abomination. Shame on sanctimonious feel-no-guilt first world governments, unmoved to end this out of sight out of mind replay of the Rwandan bloodbath; especially U.N. Security Council stalwarts China, coincidentally a Sudanese oil customer, Russia, and current Arab council representative Qatar; enamored by Sudan’s low life lobbying efforts thus opposed to any beefed up deployment of U.N. troops that just might stop the bleeding. The rest of the story >>

UN Envoy Urges Darfur War Crimes Prosecution

By Noel King
Khartoum

A top United Nation's envoy to Sudan has charged that little is being done to prosecute suspected criminals of war in the war-torn western Darfur region, and says worsening security is perpetuating human rights abuses. Sima Samar says that human rights abuses persist throughout Sudan, including arbitrary arrests and torture.

Amid increasing violence in Darfur, the United Nations Human Rights Rapporteur to Sudan says that there has been little accountability for war crimes in the region, and suggests that Sudanese courts set up to try war criminals have failed to do the job. For the full story, click here >>>

Killing worsens in Darfur as media attention fades

By Fred Bridgland in Johannesburg

ETHNIC cleansing in the remote Darfur region of Sudan – which many human rights groups say amounts to genocide – has all but slid off the international media radar in recent months. But as the news coverage has faded, the suffering and oppression of ordinary Darfurians has steadily worsened.
The crackdown by Sudan’s Arab government in Khartoum on its fellow Muslims in Darfur – who are ethnically black Africans – is now so tyrannical that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan last week wrote to the United States ambassador to the UN asking for air support to counter government-backed militias creating mayhem in Darfur. For more click here >>>

Darfur Refugee Crisis Deepens As Security Council Deadlocked

By Jeremy Bransten, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

The humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan's Darfur province -- one of the world's most pressing refugee crises -- is deepening and spreading across the border to Chad. But the UN Security Council, which is discussing the issue this week, remains deadlocked over what to do. Click here for the full story >>>