KHARTOUM, 12 August 2004 — Raids by Sudanese forces and Arab militiamen have worsened a desperate situation in Darfur, rights groups say, but the United Nations said Khartoum was making serious efforts to keep pledges to curb the violence. The United Nations has told Sudan to curb marauding Janjaweed militia or face sanctions, but rights group Human Rights Watch said yesterday fresh atrocities disproved Sudanese claims security was returning to the western region.
“In many rural areas and small towns in Darfur, government forces and the Janjaweed militias continue to routinely rape and assault women and girls when they leave the periphery of the camps and towns,” the New York-based group said in a report.
The United Nations said in a statement from Geneva on Tuesday that the Janjaweed were still attacking some of the more than one million people displaced by fighting in remote Darfur, and that Sudan had carried out fresh helicopter attacks.
The Security Council has told Sudan to make real efforts to rein in the Janjaweed and improve security in its western Darfur region or face unspecified sanctions.
The UN secretary-general’s special representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, told reporters in Khartoum yesterday the UN reports were still being checked to see if and where the attacks had taken place.
Asked about the reported helicopter attacks, he said: “Attacks, if reported, have to be checked. Whether they took place, where they took place, we are checking that at the moment.”
“So far in all my talks I am meeting a government that is seriously trying to keep the promises made,” he added.
Sudan’s President Omar Bashir, meanwhile, insisted his government was doing its utmost to end the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, rejecting criticism from the “evil powers” in the international community.
During a visit by Comoran President Azali Assoumani, Bashir lashed out at “the evil powers which do not want the Sudan and other African countries to enjoy welfare and stability because they benefit from conflicts in Africa”.
Such powers have “kindled sedition in Darfur”, he charged. He did not name the countries, but his comments came a day after he accused Europe and the United States of seeking to plunder Sudan’s gold and oil behind the fig leaf of humanitarian concern.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said the UN statements were contradictory and misleading public opinion. “We have noticed that UN statements at the moment are in constant contradiction...each department within it is acting without coordination,” he told reporters. “This lack of consensus is misleading to public opinion and we would not want the current contradictions to leave the government to rethink its commitment toward the UN,” he said.
Sudanese State Minister for Foreign Affairs Najeeb Al-Kheir Abdel Wahab said: “We believe that this statement is very vague and it’s sourceless and believe it is inconsistent with the judgment made by the special representative Jan Pronk.”
The Sudanese government says it has deployed 10,000 police to Darfur and last week pledged to set up safe areas for the one million people the United Nations says have been uprooted.
But Human Rights Watch said Khartoum was absorbing the Janjaweed into its security forces instead of disarming them. Government claims that it was ending impunity for Janjaweed leaders, as demanded by the United Nations, were doubtful, it said.
Abdel Wahab said reports from groups like Human Rights Watch were trying to plant “seeds of conflagration between Sudan and the West.”
Sudan has said international pressure over Darfur aims to undermine the country’s government, which Washington lists as a “sponsor of terror”. The African Union has sent observers to Darfur to monitor a shaky truce signed in April and the Netherlands will begin to fly in 154 Rwandan troops to protect the monitors on Saturday. Sudan has rejected any African Union peacekeepers.
In another development, the UN World Food Program (WFP) yesterday said it had been given free access into rebel-held areas in western Sudan’s Darfur region to carry out assessments of humanitarian needs there.
The Sudan Liberation Army and Justice and Equality Movement “have granted WFP unimpeded access to rebel-controlled areas of the conflict-ravaged region in order to carry out crucial assessments,” WFP said in a statement.
