BEIRUT, 20 July 2004 — Arab militias in Sudan are gang-raping and abducting girls as young as eight and women as old as 80, systematically killing, torturing, or using them as sex slaves, an Amnesty International report said yesterday.

Militias known as Janjawid, which rights groups say are backed by the government, have been fighting rebels in Sudan’s western Darfur region since last year, triggering one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

“When we tried to escape they shot more children,” one woman identified only as A. told Amnesty researchers. “They raped women, I saw many cases of Janjawid raping women and girls. They are happy when they rape. They sing when they rape and they tell us that we are just slaves and that they can do with us how they wish.” As many as 30,000 people have been killed in Darfur and more than a million displaced, their homes bombed by government planes, their crops stolen.

In a report called “Rape as a Weapon of War”, Amnesty outlines sexual violence against women it says is happening on a massive scale. It says Khartoum is actively violating its legal obligations to protect civilians. “Soldiers of the Sudan government army are present during attacks by the Janjawid and when rapes are committed, but the Sudan government has done nothing so far to stop them,” Amnesty researcher Benedicte Goderiaux told a news conference.

Darfur’s rebels accuse the government of arming the Arab Janjawid to loot and burn African villages in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Khartoum denies the charge. The Sudan Embassy in Beirut said in a statement that the Amnesty report was aimed at defaming the government, distorting Arab culture and driving a wedge between Sudan’s ethnic groups.

The Amnesty report, launched in Beirut and Nairobi, details gang rapes, public rapes, killings of those who resist rape, abductions for sexual slavery, and cases where women and girls have had their legs broken to stop them running away. It is based on hundreds of testimonies collected from refugees in camps in Chad. Although the sample of victims was limited, Amnesty said it pointed to widespread abuse.

The London-based group said rebels fighting the Janjawid may also have raped civilians, but facts were limited. One woman was five months pregnant when the Janjawid abducted her and eight others during an attack in July.

Efforts to end the crisis through negotiations are in tatters after rebels stormed out of peace talks last week. They said they would only meet government delegates when Khartoum fulfilled promises including disarming the Janjawid.

Amnesty called for an end to the conflict, better protection of civilians, Janjawid disarmament, trials of those carrying out the attacks and an international commission of inquiry to examine war crimes in Darfur. A separate conflict in Sudan between the government and southern rebels has killed around two million people in the past two decades. Peace negotiations have brought it close to an end.

“The mass rapes ongoing in Darfur are war crimes and crimes against humanity but the international community is doing very little to stop it,” Amnesty said. Amnesty’s British director Kate Allen accused the Sudanese government of involvement and called for sanctions.

“In almost all attacks on villages recorded by Amnesty International, the government’s army were either directly involved or direct witnesses,” the human rights organization said. It quoted a victim as saying: “Some 15 women and girls were raped in different huts in the village. The Janjawid broke the limbs of some women and girls to prevent them from escaping. The Janjawid remained in the village for six to seven days.

“Five to six men would rape us, one after the other, for hours during six days, every night. My husband could not forgive me after this, he disowned me,” the victim said.

Amnesty said women and girls were being attacked, “not only to dehumanize the women themselves but also to humiliate, punish, control, inflict fear and displace women and to persecute the community to which they belong”. It raised the specters of the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Amnesty called for the Janjawid militia to be disarmed and disbanded, and an international commission of inquiry to be established immediately to examine evidence of war crimes, crimes against humanity and other violations of international humanitarian law including rape, as well as allegations of genocide. Amnesty’s report issued yesterday was based on interviews with Sudanese refugees during May 2004 in refugee camps in Chad.

Meanwhile, a Sudanese court sentenced 10 Arab militiamen to amputation and six years in jail in the first conviction of Janjawid fighters for looting and killing in Darfur, according to a ruling seen by Reuters.

The court in Nyala, the capital of Southern Darfur state, also said proceedings were to begin yesterday to try other Janjawid militiamen accused of burning Holouf village north of Nyala in the remote region. The Nyala court made the ruling on Sunday. It was the first conviction of Janjawid for their role in the conflict.