Video rouses students

By JANESE HEAVIN of the Tribune’s staff

Darfurians are dying daily, and some Rock Bridge High School students want to do something about it.

Sophomores in Matt Cone’s and Heather Hadley’s world studies classes have spent the past week talking about the situation in the region in western Sudan after having watched MTV’s "Translating Genocide." The documentary follows three college students to Sudan, where they talked to refugees. Read more >>>

Violence against Darfur women worsens - rights chief

By Kamilo Tafeng

KHARTOUM, May 4 (Reuters) - Sexual violence against women in Darfur is worsening amid a general deterioration in security and human rights in Sudan's vast west, the top U.N. human rights official said after touring the region.

"The situation (in Darfur) is poor, bad and very alarming and what is particularly sad is to see no progress and a deterioration of the situation," said Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

"I am absolutely persuaded that the sexual violence against women ... is worsening every day," Arbour told Reuters in an interview in Khartoum on Wednesday. Read more >>>

Government offensive raises fears of attack on Gereida

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks

Observers fear the town of Gereida, which provides refuge to an estimated 90,000 displaced persons, might come under siege following a series of attacks on rebel-controlled villages in South Darfur.

"We have received unconfirmed, unilateral reports that there might be an attack on Gereida town - meaning that the town could be under fire - if we do not take immediate steps," said Gemmo Lodesani, the United Nations deputy humanitarian coordinator in Sudan, said by telephone on Tuesday. Read more >>>

Janjaweed Attack in Chad Causes Panic Among Sudanese Refugees

By Lisa Schlein
Geneva

The U.N. refugee agency says fear among thousands of people who fled to Chad from Sudan's conflict-ridden province of Darfur is growing in the wake of fatal attacks by janjaweed militiamen on Monday. The agency says the attack occurred near the village of Dolola, in southeastern Chad ,just a few kilometers from a refugee camp at Goz Amir.

The refugees were not the victims of this attack but the U.N. refugee agency says it was too close for their comfort. The rest >>>

Darfur rebels right to reject agreement

Reporter: Mark Colvin

MARK COLVIN: There's been another deadline extension in talks aimed at ending the civil war in the Darfur region of Sudan. As Australia's Ambassador to the UN Robert Hill floated the possibility of Australian troops possibly being deployed to a possible peacekeeping mission there.

The Sudanese Government says it's ready to sign a draft agreement but Darfur rebel groups don't feel they've got enough out of the deal. Read more >>>

Why are we Muslims so silent on Darfur?

TAREK FATAH

The remark by a prominent Muslim refugee-rights activist troubled me greatly: "Zionists [are] abusing this issue," he announced curtly when he said he would not be joining me and hundreds of other people on Sunday at a "Scream for Darfur" rally at Queen's Park in Toronto.

This line of thinking, that Jews have somehow stolen the issue of Darfur's genocide by actively campaigning against it, has been making the rounds in cyberspace and needs a rebuttal.

The fact that more than 200,000 Darfurians, almost all of them Muslims, have been killed in an ongoing genocide; the fact that more than a million Muslim Darfurians are displaced refugees living in squalor and fear, appears not to have registered with the leadership of traditional Muslim organizations and mosques in this country. Read the full story >>>

QUANTIFYING GENOCIDE IN DARFUR: April 28, 2006 (Part 1)

Eric Reeves


Currently extant data, in aggregate, strongly suggest that total excess mortality in Darfur, over the course of more than three years of deadly conflict, now significantly exceeds 450,000. As Rwanda marks a grim twelfth anniversary, we must accept that while vast human destruction in Darfur has unfolded plainly before us, we have again done little more than watch, offering only unprotected humanitarian assistance while some 450,000 people have perished as a result of violence, as well as consequent malnutrition and disease. Human destruction to date, however, certainly does not mark the conclusion of the world’s moral failure in responding to genocide in Darfur---on the contrary, this massive previous destruction is our best measure of what is impending. Read more >>>

Ending the Darfur silence

THE MOST compelling humanitarian challenge of these times is to stop the genocide in Darfur. In the past three years, more than 400,000 people have been annihilated and more than 2 million driven from their homes by the National Islamic Front regime that rules Sudan and its proxies, Arab militias known as Janjaweed. And all that time -- while helicopter gunships were strafing villages, soldiers were raping women and girls, and Janjaweed raiders were smashing babies' skulls -- the nations of the world did little more than bemoan the complexities standing in the way of a life-saving mission. Now, they are even forcing cuts in United Nations food aid for lack of funding. Read more >>>

Holocaust On People's Minds At Darfur Rally

WASHINGTON

In the words of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, "for the sake of our humanity, save Darfur."

Wiesel was among the thousands who turned out in Washington Sunday to urge the Bush administration to help end the genocide in Sudan's Darfur region.

The crowd chanted, "Not on our watch" as speakers took turns on the National Mall.

Wiesel said while families are being uprooted and starved and children tormented and slaughtered, the world is "indifferent to their plight."

He said he won't remain silent because "silence helps the killer, never his victims." Read more >>>

Express your outrage about genocide

By TRUDY RUBIN

Today, the Save Darfur coalition will hold a mass rally in Washington to focus public outrage on the genocide in Darfur. But, although the rally will be large, it appears the numbers won't be sufficient to make a truly powerful statement -- unless more demonstrators travel to Washington at the last minute.

One has to ask: Why is there so little public passion about the massive Darfur killing? Read the full story >>>

A Loss of Hope Inside Darfur Refugee Camps

Over Two Years, a Genocide Comes Into View
By Emily Wax
Washington Post


NAIROBI -- On a stretch of the austere desert in Chad, just across the border from the Darfur region of Sudan, signs of tragedy came into full view: tattered clothing caught on the branches of thornbushes, carcasses of camels and goats that died on the long journey out.

Then the people began to appear: haggard young girls with siblings on their backs, old men riding atop donkeys piled high with cooking pots, water jugs and mats, and elderly grandmothers, some with gunshot wounds, being pushed through the sand in wheelbarrows. Read more >>>

U.N. Food Agency Cuts Rations in Darfur

By SAM CAGE

GENEVA Apr 28, 2006 (AP)— The U.N. food agency said Friday it is cutting rations in half for about 3 million refugees in Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region because of a shortage of money, calling it "scandalous" that it has to stretch out supplies while it pleads for funds. Read more >>>

Act Now to Stop Genocide in Darfur, Sudan

Baltimore -- Lutheran World Relief joins more than 160 humanitarian agencies in the Save Darfur Coalition to co-sponsor the Rally to Stop Genocide in Washington, D.C. this Sunday, April 30 to draw attention to the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. Concurrent rallies will be held in cities across the U.S.

“This genocide has been tragically under the radar screen for too long,” said LWR President Kathryn Wolford. “It’s time that we collectively raise our voices and insist on an end to the violence.” Read more >>>

Students travel to Capitol to protest genocide

By Aliza Appelbaum

More than 400,000 people have died in genocide in the Sudanese Darfur region. The violence between Arab Muslims and black Muslims has displaced another 2.5 million from their homes, forcing them to go without food, water or shelter for months. Read more >>>

Sudan: Government Offensive Threatens Darfur Civilians

By: Human Rights Watch


The Sudanese government has launched a new military offensive in South Darfur that is placing civilians at grave risk, Human Rights Watch said today.

An April 24 attack on a village in rebel-controlled territory used Antonov aircraft and helicopter gunships indiscriminately in violation of the laws of war, and displaced thousands of civilians who had sought safety there. The attack occurred just a week before an April 30 deadline for peace talks to end in Abuja, Nigeria. Two other villages in the area have also been attacked in the past 10 days. On April 25, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution placing four Sudanese individuals involved in the armed conflict on a sanctions list for international travel bans and asset freezes. Read more >>>

Darfur up close

Column by Nick Clooney

President Bush has called it genocide. Colin Powell has used the same word. Journalist Elizabeth Rubin described it as "slow-motion genocide." They are all talking about Darfur

Darfur is the westernmost region of Africa's largest nation, the Sudan. Darfur is also, by all accounts, the most miserable and dangerous place to live on the face of the planet. The full story >>>

UNICEF: Malnutrition Rising in Darfur

By ERICA BULMAN

GENEVA - Increased fighting, violence and a lack of funding are eroding progress in Darfur and malnutrition is on the rise again, the U.N. children‘s fund said Wednesday.

"We need to raise the alarm bell," said Ted Chaiban, head of UNICEF ‘s mission to Sudan. "We‘re losing ground. We need to stop this deterioration. Read more >>>

Darfur: Genocide Without Witnesses

By Jacky Mamou
Libération

Khartoum is deliberately hindering international humanitarian action.

While the international community commemorates the twelfth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda - and, hand on heart, swears "Never again!" - murders, rapes, pillages and the forced displacement of black African populations, the Fur, Massalit, and Zaghawa, have continued for over three years in western Sudan. Read more >>>

Speaker recounts horrors of Darfur genocide

Eyewitness to Sudan conflict says U.S. should help region
Behnaz Abolmaali

A group of about 100 students heard first-hand accounts of rape, murder and torture in Darfur, Sudan, during a talk Friday by Brian Steidle, a former Marine captain and U.S. representative to the African Union's peacekeeping mission. Steidle presented photographs and poignant accounts of individuals caught in what he said is regarded as the worst humanitarian conflict today.

"I saw villages of up to 20,000 people burned to the ground. I saw government looting, burning," said Steidle, who is on a nationwide tour to speak about his experiences. "I saw people who had their ears cut off, their eyes plucked out, simply because of who they are." Read more >>>

Darfur on the brink

The United Nations Security Council was told last week that the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of the Sudan is growing worse because of government interference with the delivery of food and other aid. Yet two permanent members of the Security Council, Russia and China, have signaled opposition to using sanctions to change the behavior of the Sudanese government. If they carry out their veto threat, the consequences will be even more tragic. Read more >>>

Children's art gives insight into Darfur

Violence, warfare part of normal life
By Mike Dawson

The children in the Kalma displacement camp in Darfur know their shapes.

Triangles, for instance. Many can aptly draw one long narrow triangle then connect another to its wide end.

Add a bending rectangle to the bottom and you have an AK-47.

Looking through the dozens of crayon pictures drawn and colored by 25 children living in the Darfur camp, one is at once embraced by innocence and smacked with horror. The full story >>>

A voice against genocide

By KELLY ROUBA

PRINCETON BOROUGH -- In a photo captured by pediatrician Jerry Ehrlich while providing medical care in Darfur, Sudan, a 2-year-old boy lies on the ground. His eyes are sunken and every bone can be counted.

Once full of life, Ehrlich said the toddler had become so weak that all he could do was lie still. "His immune system is shot due to malnutrition. This is what happens to most of the kids in Darfur," Ehrlich said. Read more >>>

Will we watch as atrocities continue?

JONATHAN GURWITZ
"Every day our families are killed and raped. We are waiting for your help."

Maryam Adam a Darfur refugee

A great mystery of theology surrounds the parable of the good Samaritan.

As recounted in the Gospel of Luke, robbers attack a traveler on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho and leave him to die. A priest and then a member of the priestly class pass by the wounded traveler on the side of the road.

A Samaritan - a foreigner - stops and renders aid, bandaging his wounds and taking on the expense of sheltering and caring for the victim.

What would the Samaritan have done if he arrived as the robbers were attacking the traveler, not afterward? How you answer that question will indicate quite a bit about your view of the world - about whether we who are fortunate to live in peace and tranquility should simply pass down the other side of the road as horrific events transpire.

With regard to Darfur, this is more than a fanciful inquiry. A genocidal campaign by the government of Sudan against black Africans in the western part of the country has, over two years, taken as many as 400,000 lives and created more than 2 million refugees. The atrocities committed by the Sudanese military and its Janjaweed allies defy comprehension: torture and execution of civilians, castration of men, rape of women and girls, all on a massive scale. The full story >>>

Holocaust tribute to focus on Darfur

GRAHAM FRASER
NATIONAL AFFAIRS WRITER


The phrase "never again," long applied to the commemoration of the Holocaust, is taking on new meaning. Today, thousands of green ribbons will be given to federal and provincial legislators to be worn Tuesday to draw attention to massacres in Darfur. Read more >>>

As the genocide in Darfur goes on, chaos and killing spread to Sudan's neighbours

By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor

It has been called a genocide in slow motion, its gruesome details unfolding while the world looks the other way. And it is spreading.

There are pictures, there are witness accounts, there are the Western visitors who go home with harrowing tales of rape, scorched earth and horseback attacks on helpless villagers. The entire story >>>

Darfur crisis is 'as bad as ever'

The humanitarian situation in Sudan's Darfur region is as bad now as....

Jan Egeland told the BBC that aid workers in Darfur were "in retreat" from attacks by armed groups, a funding shortfall and government obstacles.

He said that 500,000 people of the 3m who needed help were "out of reach".

The US says a genocide is being committed against Darfur's black African population. Read more >>>

Darfur 'too deadly for aid work'

Fighting has made it impossible to reach large areas of the Sudanese region of Darfur, the Red Cross says.
International Committee of the Red Cross Sudan spokesman Paul Conneally told the BBC that its vehicles are being systematically looted.

He said tens of thousands of people had been forced from their homes around the rebel bases in the Marra mountains.

Aid workers are trying to help more than two million people, in what the US says is a genocide. The full story >>>

'Time is running out for Darfur'

BY TIM LOUIS MACALUSO

Mohamed Yahya doesn't know if his parents are still alive. While he was attending school in Cairo, his village in Darfur --- Koka --- was repeatedly attacked by the Arab militia operating in Sudan. Read more >>>

Posturing on Genocide in Darfur and Eastern Chad

The UN Takes Its Turn at Posturing on Genocide in Darfur and Eastern Chad
Posted by: ereeves

US and Britain offer a token Security Council sanctions resolution, which is promptly rejected by China, Russia, and Qatar
The international community seems to have an inexhaustible capacity for disingenuousness, expediency, and bad faith in responding to resurgent genocide in Darfur and eastern Chad. Even as all humanitarian indicators strongly suggest that human mortality and displacement are rapidly accelerating, there is no action in prospect---diplomatic or military---that might address the acute insecurity that threatens civilians and continues to attenuate humanitarian capacity and operations. This growing insecurity ensures that the deaths of huge numbers of innocent children, women, and men will continue through the coming rainy season and hunger gap (May through September)---and well beyond. The full story >>>

Darfur Gets More Violent

The number of "no go" areas in Darfur ("no go" due to violence) has increased since December 2005. The current situation appears as bad as it was two years ago. The government denies this is the situation. From the Sudanese perspective, these complaints are part of an organized political drive to put the UN in charge of the current (failing) African Union-led peacekeeping effort. However, since mid-2003, the most trusted reports have come from NGO aid groups and UN observers in Darfur. Read more >>>

Bush is right: Darfur genocide must be stopped

By NAT HENTOFF

On March 25, at Freedom House in Washington, D.C., George W. Bush -- who has been more outspoken on the mass murders in Darfur than any world leader -- said: "When we say genocide, we mean genocide must be stopped!" The African Union's small force, he added, is not enough. "There should be a NATO overlay" of support. Read more >>>

The World And Darfur

On March 25 at a speech at Freedom House, President George Bush became the only world leader to state plainly that the atrocities in Darfur amount to genocide.

He then said it must be stopped and proposed allowing NATO to help support the African Union’s small force there.
Since that time, the world, the United Nations, the Muslim nations and the African nations have done … nothing.

In fact, a few days after the president’s speech, NATO head Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said that "Africans feel very strongly" that they should take care of problems on their own continent. So, he added, one "should be careful" about imposing oneself on them. "There is not yet the need for declaring a willingness for [NATO] to participate."

No doubt Africans should take care of their own problems but, as columnist Nat Hentoff notes, more than 300,000 Darfur Africans have been killed in the conflict and more than 2 million displaced, so there does appear to be something lacking in the African response. Read more >>>

The world fails to act on another slaughter

But the same nightmare of genocide that descended upon Rwanda has now come to the Darfur region of Sudan -- and the world's response is exactly the same as it was 12 years ago: silence, foot-dragging and stunning ineptitude. More than 400,000 people -- about the population of Oakland -- have died so far. The dithering continues, even as Darfur chokes on its own blood. It almost feels like the United Nations and the great Western powers are waiting for the granite memorials to go up and the Sudanese national holidays to be established before they demonstrate that the routine slaughter of innocent people in Africa is an issue worth caring about. Read more >>>

Genocide in Sudan begs for attention

Tim Nonn

I used to be a dedicated bystander. Whenever I caught a glimpse in the media of the genocide in Sudan, I turned away.

One night, I stopped -- and heard the story of a young Sudanese mother who had walked for days through the desert with her children until they reached the safety of a refugee camp. Her village had been destroyed and her husband killed by government-sponsored militia. She saved her children, and changed my life.

I asked my church to contribute funds for the refugees in Darfur. A few months later, my tranquil existence as a husband, father and editor of technical journals was turned upside-down when I was asked by national church leaders to form a grassroots interfaith campaign called Dear Sudan. Our goal, as part of a larger movement, is to stop the genocide. Read more >>>

Darfur's children deserve our protection

By William Hague

We've seen the evidence of ethnic cleansing. We must act now or be condemned for our inhumanity

'We send our grandmothers to collect the firewood. We know they will be beaten. But we have no choice; if we send our men, they will kill them. If we send our women or our girls, they will rape them.' I could see the bitterness and despair on the young woman's face as she described the cruel choice that her family is forced to make every day. We were standing in Abu Shouk displaced persons' camp in Darfur, Sudan, in front of the flimsy tent that she called home. The full story >>>

Darfur Video Diary by shadow foreign secretary William Hague

William Hague's
Three years of conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan has created one of the worst humanitarian crises the world has seen. Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague has visited the area with the charity Oxfam. Watch the video diary for Sky News >>>

Bush Administration Darfur Policy: Incompetence or Disingenuousness?

Eric Reeves


The Washington Post editorial (full text of this important statement at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/10/AR2006041001535.html) has asked the essential question of the Bush administration; tragically, the preponderance of evidence suggests that “two-faced” and disingenuous is the better description. What follows from this ugly reality is a lack of meaningful US policy for Darfur and eastern Chad, with the bleak diplomatic prospect that US leadership will be lacking as the Darfur region enters its period of greatest and most remorseless human destruction. Despite various posturing comments by Mr. Bush about a significant NATO role in Darfur (“NATO stewardship” was his phrase in February), statements from senior NATO officials in Brussels indicate that the role of the Alliance will in fact be highly limited. It is all too clear that senior Bush administration officials, at both the State Department and Pentagon, have failed to communicate effectively with NATO allies in Brussels, leaving a gaping disparity in public statements. The Bush administration has not invested the political and diplomatic capital necessary to sway the Alliance, which moves by notoriously slow consensus. Read more >>>

In the dark on Darfur

Black leaders need to shine a light -- and raise a ruckus

The situation in the Sudanese region of Darfur, where more than 2 million people have been displaced due to violence and some 400,000 have thus far died, forces us to look at the lack of interest or discussion of an ongoing genocidal operation imposed on black Africans by Arab Muslims.
Our civil rights establishment, which might have shouted itself hoarse, has been remarkably quiet, or at least they have made very little noise of the sort that draws a crowd of people from the media. Fore more >>>

While Darfur burns

It is enormously distressing to watch the sausage-making that passes for the world's attempt to do something about the carnage in Darfur.
The United Nations is still dawdling over plans to replace the African Union force currently there with a well-armed UN peacekeeping force. An attempt last week by the United Nations' top official on humanitarian issues, Jan Egeland, to visit Darfur was rebuffed by the Sudanese government. The full story >>>

Violations of African Union troops in Darfur

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/253272944?ltl=1143819150

Putting an end to Darfur genocide

Brian Steidle has seen it all: Bayonets used like toothpicks to pluck up babies; villages torched; people maimed; women and girls who have been raped; children who are orphaned. The former Marine captain spent six months in Darfur in the west of Sudan with an African Union peacekeeping mission, monitoring the genocide taking place there because Arab raiders, called janjaweed and supported by the Sudanese army, are victimizing black Darfurians.

Now Steidle is spreading word about his experiences there and trying to create awareness and demand that the world do something about it. Read the full editorial >>>

Darfur crisis intensifies

New York

Efforts to stop atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region are unravelling, with a new peacekeeping force uncertain, relief aid under attack and UN sanctions stymied, UN officials and analysts say.

"The situation is spiralling downward on the ground and retreating backwards on a daily basis in New York, Washington and Brussels," home of Nato, said John Prendergast of the International Crisis Group think-tank.

"A fragile consensus has collapsed under the weight of the Sudan government's artful diplomacy campaign," Prendergast told Reuters.

"It played chicken with the broad international community, and once again the international community drove off the road."

The main bulwark against abuses is the cash-strapped African Union which, under pressure from its Arab members who often side with Khartoum, is hesitating to merge its 7 000 troops with a UN force. The full story >>>

Ending Genocide in Darfur

Editorial

A time for quick actionEnding genocide requires more than slow-motion intervention. The United States and the United Nations must act much more aggressively and quickly to protect civilians trying to escape violence in Sudan's Darfur region.

The U.S. government has labeled the violence in Darfur, which began in 2003, as genocide. That's appropriate: The militias that have been trying to erase the population there are backed by the government in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.

Sudan's president, Omar el-Bashir, responds to such charges with a "Me? No, never." But then government helicopters buzz overhead to strafe villages and camps for the displaced, who number 2.5 million. Read more >>>

Darfur violence crosses border into Chad

By Shashank Bengali
JANJAWEED ARE FREE TO RAID AND ATTACK REFUGEES, CIVILIANS


The war in Sudan's Darfur region, where more than 200,000 people have been killed in what the Bush administration calls genocide, is growing deadlier and more complicated.

Since the beginning of the year, militias backed by the Sudanese government are crossing over almost daily into neighboring Chad and freely attacking Darfur refugees and Chadian civilians in villages along the lengthy, desolate border. Read more >>>

Rescuing Darfur

By Juan E. Mendez

Twelve years ago this month, Rwanda experienced some of the most brutal crimes in memory. Up to 1 million persons were massacred, literally butchered with machetes, for merely being ethnic Tutsis or Hutu political moderates.
As images of mutilated bodies beamed across the globe, the international community stood idle. As we reflect on the lessons of that horrific episode, we must renew our commitment to take bold, decisive measures to ensure genocide does not take place in our times. We cannot claim to have learned the lessons of the 1994 Rwandan genocide if our action in the face of genocidal violence remains half-hearted.
Action is particularly needed in Darfur, where the threat of genocide continues to loom large. For more >>>

World fails in finding lasting solution to Darfur crisis: UN

NAIROBI, April 7 (Xinhua) -- A top United Nations relief official said on Friday the world has failed to provide a lasting solution to the crisis in Sudan's volatile region of Darfur where a three-year fighting has killed thousands of people and displaced million others.

Addressing a news conference in Nairobi, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland said the world has failed to put pressure on Khartoum and rebels to reach a solution at the negotiation process. For the full story >>>

End slaughter in Darfur: The United States must lead in halting genocide

The United Nations calls Darfur the "worst humanitarian crisis in the world," and for good reason.

Three years ago, Sudan began massacring ethnic African villagers in its western region of Darfur. As many as 400,000 people have died so far of murder, starvation and disease. Another 2.2 million have become refugees and are teetering on the brink of extermination. For more >>>

The catastrophe in Darfur

By: Ailise McMahon

The United Nations's top humanitarian official in Sudan, Jan Egeland, was prevented from entering Darfur on Monday. He told The New York Times, "[The Sudanese government] said I'm not welcome ... My interpretation is that they don't want me to see what I was planning to witness in South and West Darfur, which is renewed attacks on the civilian population." Read more >>>

Khartoum Sharply Accelerates War on Humanitarian Aid in Darfur

Eric Reeves

Hundreds of thousands of civilians are directly threatened with genocidal destruction by the National Islamic Front

Jan Egeland, the UN’s chief humanitarian official, was this week brazenly and contemptuously denied access to Darfur by leaders of Khartoum’s National Islamic Front (“National Congress Party”). Not only was Egeland refused entry to South Darfur and West Darfur, but he was informed through the NIF’s UN mission in New York that he “would not be welcome in Khartoum.” As if to underscore their contempt for UN humanitarian operations, Khartoum’s genocidaires the next day denied Egeland use of Sudanese air-space as he sought to travel to Chad to see Darfuri refugees and the rapidly deteriorating conditions along the Darfur/Chad border. The full story >>>

Sudan: UN Concerned for 90,000 Displaced People After Aid Group Asked to Leave

UN News Service (New York)

Living conditions for 90,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the conflict ridden Darfur region of Sudan are likely to get worse after Sudanese authorities asked the Norwegian non-governmental organization that was coordinating the largest IDP camp to leave, the top United Nations relief official said today, just a few days after authorities banned him from visiting the impoverished region.
For more >>>

U.N. envoy: Crisis in Darfur getting worse

Fox News and Associated Press

NAIROBI, Kenya — The conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region has worsened, with 200,000 additional people being forced from their homes, a top U.N. envoy barred from visiting the zone by Sudanese authorities said Tuesday.

Jan Egeland, U.N. under-secretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, said Sudanese government officials had denied his U.N. aircraft permission to overfly Darfur in order to visit Sudanese refugees in neighboring Chad. A day earlier, they had barred him from visiting the capital, Khartoum, and the Darfur region. Read more >>>

Violations of African Union troops in Darfur

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/253272944?ltl=1143819150

Holocaust in Plain Sight

by Nat Hentoff

[U.N.] official Jan Pronk told the Security Council that killings, rapes and armed attacks on Darfur villagers [are being] committed by armed gangs secure in the knowledge that no one would stop or punish them.
New York Times, March 22

Long before the genocide in Sudan, I had been reporting for years in the Voice on the Sudan government's murders, gang rapes, and enslavement of black Christians and animists in the south of Sudan—and the attempts of the Boston-based American Anti-Slavery Group, black American pastors, Christian Solidarity International, and a few members of Congress to awaken this country to the horrors in Sudan. Read more >>>

Gridlock on Genocide

by J. Carter Johnson
Pressure on Sudan mounts, but the killing continues in Darfur.

In Darfur, the desert of western Sudan, hideous genocide continues. A developing coalition that crosses the religious and political spectrum has lobbied hard for government bureaucracies to take action. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., recently returned from a visit to the devastated region. Still, it remains to be seen whether anyone can coax Sudan's government to stop the mass rape and murder. Read more >>>

UN's Egeland says Sudan stops him going to Darfur

By Opheera McDoom

RUMBEK, Sudan, April 3 (Reuters) - The U.N.'s top humanitarian official in Sudan Jan Egeland said the government barred him on Monday from visiting Darfur to prevent him seeing poor conditions there.

The apparent snub comes as Sudan is under international pressure over violence in Darfur that has made aid deliveries impossible in large parts of its vast western region.

"I've been barred from going to south Darfur, west Darfur and also I have been told that I am not welcome in Khartoum," Egeland, U.N. under-secretary for humanitarian affairs, told Reuters during a visit to southern Sudan. For more click here >>>

Former U.S. Marine seeks end to genocide in Darfur

By Jamie Ward

Former Marine Brian Steidle shows pictures that he took while stationed in Darfur to students in the business school Thursday night.
Yossi May • IDS
Former Marine Brian Steidle spoke of an ongoing "systematic ethnic cleansing" he witnessed in Darfur, a region in Sudan, while touring Bloomington Thursday and Friday. The events were part of the "Million Voices for Darfur" campaign.

"This is a government-sponsored military operation," Steidle said. "At its height, 9,000 to 10,000 people have died in a month and there are now nearly 2.5 to 3 million people in internally displaced persons camps. It's going on right now as we sit in this room. People are dying." Read more >>>

Violations of African Union troops in Darfur

Allegations of sexual abuses, by those who are supposed to curb sexual crimes, should not be left unaccounted for.

Please listen to the silent horrors unheard by many in the following link:

http://www.channel4.com/player/playerwindow.html?id=3979&vert=news

Whatever has been done to alleviate the suffering of the innocent is highly appreciated and the least to be done is to sign the petition in the following link:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/253272944?ltl=1143972683

Sudan tragedy needs action

The tragedy in the Sudan is overwhelming. In three years, 300,000 people have been killed; more than 2 million people have been displaced. Rapes and mutilations occur daily. The United Nations describes it as the world's worst humanitarian disaster and the United States has gone so far as labeling the situation in Darfur "genocide."

Yet, little is officially being done to right the wrongs, and grassroots efforts coordinated by frustrated citizens are sprouting up.

In Poughkeepsie, Diane Browne-Sterdt, like many people throughout the country, is increasingly appalled about the atrocities occurring in the western region of the Sudan, especially after having seen the movie "Hotel Rwanda." Read the full story >>>

Darfur: A peaceful option

By Kofi A. Annan
Alpha Oumar Konare


While no one knows for sure how many people have died in the conflict in Darfur, western Sudan, more than 2.6 million are suffering because of it, and urgently need assistance.

Villages have been burnt, crops uprooted, men murdered, women raped, children abducted. And 1.9 million people have been displaced from their homes within Sudanese territory. Others are still at home but prevented from planting the crops on which their lives depend. If food does not soon reach them, they too will be forced to go search of it, swelling already overcrowded camps. For more >>>>

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 >>>