Amnesty International is calling on the Sudanese government to immediately release all those it has arrested or detained in Darfur for communicating their opinions with foreign visitors about their plight.
In a communiqué released Monday night, the London-based group charged that scores of people have been arrested over the past six weeks for talking with foreign government leaders, including U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, and members of the African Union’s (AU’s) Ceasefire Commission, as well as western journalists.
"The Sudanese government should give assurances that none of those arrested will be tortured or ill-treated while in detention and that Sudanese people can speak freely about Darfur without fear of reprisals," the group said.
Amnesty’s statement came as the government in Khartoum agreed to take part in peace talks to be mediated by the African Union (AU) in Nigeria with two rebel groups from Darfur set to begin in twoweeks.p
At the same time, however, Sudan’s foreign minister, Mustafa Ismail, said his government would reject the AU’s proposals to increase the number of troops it hopes to deploy as monitors and peacekeepers in Darfur from 300 to as many as 2,000.
Sudan received backing from the Arab League at a foreign-ministers’ meeting in Cairo Sunday which rejected "any threats of coercive military intervention in the region or imposing any sanctions on Sudan" to end what the United Nations has called the world’s "worst humanitarian crisis."
Some 30,000 people in Darfur have reportedly been killed over the past 18 months of violence, and as many as 50,000 more are believed to have died of malnutrition or disease over the last several months.
Virtually all of the victims are members of African ethnic groups who have come under attack by Arab militias, called the Janjaweed, who have been armed and supported by the government.
At least 1.2 million Africans were forced from their homes of whom some 200,000 have made it to relative safety across the border in Chad. The rest have been internally displaced or herded into camps which relief groups have found impossible to supply with adequate amounts of food, tents, blankets and medicine.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) predicted in May that 300,000 people are likely to die of malnutrition or disease by the end of the year even if relief agencies are given full access to those in need.
In recent weeks, the government has reportedly begun withholding support for the Janjaweed, although many members of the militias have reportedly been absorbed into the army and police, and raids against African targets have continued.
After several weeks of lobbying, the UN Security Council ten days ago approved a resolution giving the Sudanese government until the end of August to take control of the situation in Darfur and cooperate fully with the UN and other relief groups in providing supplies to the displaced and to disarm the militias.
The United States and the European Union (EU) had wanted the resolution to call for the imposition of sanctions against the Janjaweed and certain members of the government if the situation had not vastly improved by that time, but other Security Council members balked, so it remains unclear what will happen if its demands remain unmet at that time.
Already, Sudan’s powerful vice president, Ali Osman Taha, told the BBC Sunday that the deadline was unrealistic and that more time would be required to disarm the Janjaweed and the two rebel groups in particular. Taha is believed to be the leader within the government of a group of Arab chauvinists that has strongly backed the Janjaweed against the Africans. Both the militias and the African population in Darfur are Muslim.
The Janjaweed campaign has given rise to charges – endorsed by the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Holocaust Museum, and the Congressional Black Caucus, among others – of genocide, although most international human rights groups, such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, have said it is not yet clear that genocide, as opposed to ethnic cleansing, is what is taking place.
In its statement Monday, however, Amnesty charged that Khartoum is actively retaliating against people who have been interviewed by foreign delegations who have come to Darfur to assess the situation over the last six weeks.
In North Darfur, for example, it said security forces had arrested at least 47 people, including 15 men from a camp near al-Fasher shortly after a visit by Powell on June 30 and that five more men were arrested at the same camp two weeks after after a visit by Barnier.
Six more men, including the mayor of the town, were arrested in mid-July, allegedly after talking with the AU Ceasefire Commission, while two others were arrested by Janjaweed militia.
In South Darfur, a prominent human-rights lawyer, Abazer Ahmad Abu al-Bashir, was arrested by the intelligence services in Nyala in late July after submitting a petition to the state governor, while a leader of the Sudanese Women’s Union was arrested shortly afterward apparently for calling for the disarmament of the Janjaweed.
In West Darfur, four leaders from the Masalit ethnic group were arrested in mid-July at a camp near Al-Jeneina for having talked to "foreigners" but were released last week.
(OneWorld)
