'If this isn't genocide, then what is?'

[bemildred]

While the international community procrastinated last week about whether events in Darfur constitute genocide, I visited the Ardamata refugee camp in Geneina, where 30 000 people are sheltering. Tribal leaders there testified to a campaign of killing, rape, burning and looting by the Janjaweed militias which have killed an estimated 70 000 people and displaced 1,4-million others.

Three months ago, the United Nations described the situation in Darfur as "the world's worst humanitarian crisis". On my two-day visit, I found that nothing much has changed. The government of Sudan has reneged on its promise to disarm the Janjaweed. Their campaign has the sole objective of eradicating the black tribes and installing the Arabs in their place. If this isn't genocide, then it's difficult to imagine what on earth is.

I have sent a full report to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a catalogue of systematic violence driven by ethnic hatred and aided by the Sudanese regime. We heard first-hand accounts of the rape of girls as young as 10 and women as old as 80. Men wept as they recounted the humiliations and killings. The report is on the website of the human rights group the Jubilee Campaign, which arranged the visit.
'If our men go out, they die. If we go, we are raped. That's the choice'

We joined a group of 17 women sitting in the shade of a tree, drinking coffee. Most were widows, and most had also lost fathers, brothers and sons. They need firewood for cooking and grass for their animals, and are thus forced to go beyond the camp. They had all, without exception, been the victims of attack and rape by the Janjaweed. Although they are clearly traumatised by the daily risks they run, they speak philosophically about it: "If our men go out, they die. If we go, we are raped. That's the choice."

IOL