Darfur militias in deadly attacks

More than two million people have been displaced during the conflict
About 30 people have been killed in Sudan's Darfur region, when pro-government militias raided a village, peacekeepers say.
Armed men on horses and camels rode into the village of Sirba, near the Chad border, killing those they found, say UN and African Union officials.

Meanwhile, the UN has offered at least $77m to help AU peacekeepers in Darfur.

Sudan has resisted plans for the UN to take over peacekeeping and this appears to be part of a compromise deal. Read more >>>

Genocide in Darfur

By Ziad Haider

Over 200,000 dead and 2.5 million displaced. Women are raped, cotton is stuffed in their mouth, and then they are set on fire. Rape and murder occurs in broad daylight in Darfur. And all this has been going on not for days, weeks, or months but years. Read more >>>

Nuer Community calls for military support to Darfur’s NRF

Union of Nuer Community in North America (UNCONA)
Press Release

Following three days deliberation, the Supreme Council of Nuer community in North America has unanimously decided to give military assistance to Darfur’s National Redemption Front. The ongoing genocide in Darfur perpetrated by National Congress Party’s jihadists can only be stopped militarily.

It has to be recalled that the 1994 genocide in Rwanda was stopped by the Tutsi freedom fighters after the failure of international community. Since the Bush’s administration has failed to use American military might to stop genocide in Darfur, the Supreme Council of Nuer community has come to conclusion that only the unity of the marginalized Africans in Sudan will stop ethnic cleansing in Darfur. The National Redemption Front, the military front of Darfur factions that didn’t sign the Darfur Peace Agreement, should be militarily supported to stop the genocide.
Read full press release >>>

Genocide in Darfur demands quick action

Betty Paules

Last year our church started a program called Saturday Night at the Movies. We chose movies that would inspire us to look at the world and its problems with new ideas and new visions.One of the movies we watched was "Darfur -- A 21st Century Genocide." Do Americans have any idea that the United Nations has declared this genocide to be the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today? 400,000 men, women, and children have been killed in Darfur. Millions of people have been forced from their homes and face starvation, rape and the constant threat of violence. Read more >>>

U.N. human rights chief warns of more Darfur attacks

GENEVA:
Militia movements in Darfur raise the specter that more atrocities against civilians, similar to an attack last month that killed 50 people, could be committed, the United Nations' top human rights official said Friday.

Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, urged Sudan's government to control militia in western Darfur that the global body has blamed for the Oct. 29 attacks which killed mostly young boys and elderly men and caused thousands to flee their homes.

"If the government of Sudan does not take control of the militias, disarm them and put an end to the proliferation of arms, the militias will continue to launch attacks on civilians," Arbour said in a statement. Read more >>>

Norwegian Refugee Council exits Darfur

OSLO, Norway --
A Norwegian refugee group said Friday it is closing down its humanitarian operations for nearly 300,000 people in Darfur because it is impossible to work in the troubled Sudanese region.

The Norwegian Refugee Council cited "frequent disruption" of its work, saying it had been suspended five times for a total of 210 days since it started operations in mid-2004.

"We cannot work when the authorities suspend us continuously and do not respond to our repeated requests for dialogue aimed at addressing and resolving underlying reasons for this action," said NRC Secretary-General Tomas C. Archer. Read more >>>

Nigeria's Soyinka urges world to shun Sudan

Nigerian Nobel Literature laureate Wole Soyinka has called on the world to shut its doors on the government of Sudan for "genocide" in Darfur.

"Two million people are squatting in their own country, facing genocide by their own government," he said during a visit to Nairobi, referring to the conflict in western Sudan which has killed an estimated 200 000 people and displaced 2,5-million.

While Washington and some rights groups have called the Darfur crisis "genocide", African leaders and intellectuals have generally held back from using such a charged term.

"I look down on all those who have not removed the Sudanese consulate from their country and who have not removed their consulates from Sudan," Soyinka, Read more >>>

Fight genocide: Take part in Darfur week

By Liz Leiwant

Since 2003, the Sudanese government and its militia, the janjaweed, have murdered 100,000 to 400,000 people from the Fur, Zaghawa, and Masaalit ethnic groups and displaced an additional two million. Darfur may seem like another in a long list of human rights violations and armed conflicts currently occurring in the world. Why care about Darfur above other issues? Because after the Holocaust, the world promised that never again would it allow genocide to occur, and that is exactly what is happening in Darfur. Read more >>>

Darfur: "There is a crisis of human suffering"

Dr. Rowan Gillies, International Council President of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), recently returned from a visit to Khartoum and Sudan's Darfur region. In the past year, MSF has experienced more than 40 violent security incidents, forcing the organization to close or reduce the staff of the majority of its assistance programs in the Jebel Marra region.

In western Darfur, MSF can no longer refer surgical patients and has had to postpone relief efforts for some 160,000 people living with little access to assistance or medical care in the town of Seleia. While in southern Darfur, MSF teams have had to evacuate the towns of Muhajariya and Shariya on numerous occasions. Dr. Gillies met with Sudanese government officials to express MSF's concerns over the worsening security situation in Darfur as well as to assess the humanitarian needs in the region. Here he discusses the current situation. Read more >>>

Militia attack civilians, aid workers everyday in strife-torn Darfur, warns UN

Militia are continuing to attack civilians, burn houses and destroy crops every day in Sudan’s conflict-ridden Darfur region, while targeting non-governmental workers trying to assist an estimated 2 million people displaced by the violence, a UN spokesman warned today.

“The UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) continue to receive daily reports of militia attacks on civilians, as well as attacks against humanitarian vehicles on key roads and even inside camps housing displaced persons,” spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York. Read more >>>

Darfur villagers mourn children killed by militia

By Opheera McDoom

GHEBESH, Sudan, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Arab militia on horses and camels wearing pristine uniforms and carrying brand new guns rode into Mariam Abakr Yehya's Darfur village early in the morning of Oct. 29, witnesses said.

Her three-year-old son Adam was torn from her embrace and shot dead by the intruders, who killed more than 50 people and looted all they could find in the village.

Overcome with grief as she recalled the incident, Mariam threw herself on the sandy soil, sobbing and beating the ground, her red and yellow robe covered in dust.

She cuddled her tiny baby as a surviving son hid in the gloom of their straw hut.

"Why? why? My heart is broken," she cried as her family tried to calm her down. "Next time they said they would kill this one," she said, referring to her baby boy. Read more >>>

Help end horrific tragedy in Darfur

Darfur needs our help!

Over 400,000 men, women and children are dead or dying due to a horrible civil war going on in Darfur in Africa. It is one of the worst disasters in history.

We stopped the Holocaust and we need to stop this horrible genocide. Now, it may only be a child, but the children are our future. If this country had oil, we would protect it; so, why do we ignore this terrible event? Read more >>>

Sudan failed to disarm Arab militas -- U.N. report

By Opheera McDoom

KULBUS, Sudan, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Sudan has failed to disarm proxy militias in Darfur as promised under a May peace deal, and government forces did not act to protect civilians in an attack last week that killed at least 50, a new U.N. report says.

The attack occurred on Oct. 29 near Jabel Moun, in an area where both rebel and government forces are present.

The report, seen by Reuters on Sunday, said 26 children were among 50 people killed in militia attacks on at least four villages. It said most of the 7,000 civilians living in the srea had fled their homes.

"At the very least, the attacks demonstrated the government of Sudan's continued failure to disarm militia in Darfur and, at worst, its use of militia forces that target civilians," it said.

The report was prepared by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights on the basis of witness accounts, and is due to be released shortly.

Arab militias, known locally as Janjaweed, are blamed for a widespread campaign of rape, murder and pillage in Darfur that Washington calls genocide.

Khartoum denies genocide and any link to the Janjaweed, but it does admit having armed some militias during the 3-1/2-year conflict to fight the mostly non-Arab rebels. It denies giving any current support to militias. Read more >>>

Darfur refugees flee to find stability in an unstable world

By Jeffrey Gettleman

NYALA, Sudan — There is a camp called Otash that grows bigger every day, even as some displaced people elsewhere in Darfur get to go home because their villages are now calm. Here, people fleeing the war arrive by the truckload, 200 per truck, standing up to maximize space, packed in like corn.

They come from all parts of Darfur, for word is out that there is food and water and safety here. One of the first camps, it now has about 60,000 people.

A drive through the camp, which is on the outskirts of the city of Nyala, is like a journey through the entire Darfur tragedy, in which we see the stages of the conflict laid out spatially, one after another. Read more >>>

Children's drawings from Darfur show suffering

By Myron Kukla

HOLLAND -- The images are distinct and lasting in Evelyn Sallah's mind.

"The drawings tell a story of death and destruction in the villages and refugee camps in the Darfur region of the Sudan, where a war of genocide has been going on against the people there for three years," said Sallah, a program associate for public education with Africa Action Organization, a Washington, D.C.-based humanitarian group.

The organization is dedicated to mobilizing international assistance for peace and economic development in Africa.

"Picturing Genocide" features a handful of crayon pictures drawn by children. In another time, another place, the drawings would be of a family, pets and daily life.

But these images are from the war-ravaged region of Darfur in Sudan, where more than 400,000 people have died over the past three years. Read more >>>

Darfur - Dangling And Dying

Alexactus T. Kaure


THE African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission in Sudan will end less than two months from now. This will leave an already dark and dangerous security hole in the region.

So, while you are preparing to celebrate the festive season in a few weeks with your family; others will be on the run and starving because the Sudanese government is probably preparing for a final solution to the Darfur conflict.

Of course not many people will mourn the departure of the AU force because it has been ineffective and ineffectual right from the word go. Read more >>>

Darfur militias 'kill children'

The Janjaweed are accused of ethnic cleansing

Militias backing Sudan's government have killed at least 63 people in attacks in Darfur in the past week, African peacekeepers say.
At least 27 of the victims are thought to be children under the age of 12.

The attacks were carried on camps for the displaced in the rebel stronghold of Jebel Moon, in West Darfur.

The government says it is disarming the Janjaweed militia but a BBC correspondent in Sudan says all the evidence points to the exact opposite. Read more >>>

Press politicians on crisis in Darfur

By Brianna Smith

Some 400,000 men, women, and children have been killed in Darfur. Millions of people have been forced from their homes and face starvation, rape, and the constant threat of violence. It is a serious situation that needs attention from serious people.

Right now, candidates for public office are traveling the campaign trail describing their visions for the future. As Election Day approaches, stopping the genocide in Darfur must be on the agenda. Read more >>>

Sudanese army introduces Chemical weapons to Darfur

The National Redemption Front (NRF) confirms that GoS has airlifted new weapons into Darfur. The airlift that took place a week ago during the festival of the holy month of Ramadan included banned chemical weapons and lethal bombs, described as entirely new to Darfur battlefields. Read more >>>

It would be outrageous for the U.N. not to intervene in Darfur

Editorial:
The government of Sudan is widely believed to be behind the genocide in the country's Darfur region that has claimed more than 200,000 lives and driven millions from their homes. Yet even with a new surge in violence, the United Nations is still waiting for permission from that same government to deploy a peacekeeping force to stop the killing. No wonder some critics of the United Nations consider it worthless.

It's way past time for the U.N. Security Council to dispatch the peacekeepers, whether or not Sudan's leaders agree.

U.N. intervention in a country against its wishes should be reserved for exceptional cases. But genocide more than meets that standard. Read more >>>