UNITED NATIONS, 5 May 2004 — Sudan won an uncontested election yesterday to the United Nations’ main human rights watchdog, prompting the United States to walk out because of alleged ethnic cleansing in the country’s Darfur region. Sudan’s envoy immediately shot back that the US delegation was “shedding crocodile tears,” and he accused the United States of turning a blind eye as Iraqi prisoners were mistreated and civilians were harmed in battle.
Fourteen vacant seats were filled yesterday for the 53-nation UN Human Rights Commission based in Geneva. Many were decided by regional groups before the voting in the Economic and Social Council in New York. In the African regional group, Sudan, Guinea, Togo and Kenya, filled seats for three-year terms on the commission, beginning in January.
Sichan Siv, the US delegate to the council, accused Sudan of having no right to sit on the rights commission because of ethnic cleansing in Darfur where the government is accused of backing Arab militia in pillaging black Africa villages, raping and killing.
“The United States will not participate in this absurdity,” Siv said. “Our delegation will absent itself from the meeting rather than lend support to Sudan’s candidacy,” he said before briefly walking out of council chambers. He had done the same a year ago when Cuba won a seat on the commission.
Sudan’s deputy UN ambassador, Omar Bashir Muhammad Manis, said the United States had no right to accuse anyone of human rights violations, after allegations of abuses in Iraq including mistreatment of Iraqis held in US-run prisons. Images of the Iraqi prisoners “are fresh in the minds of all justice-loving people around the world,” he said.
Meanwhile, a UN human rights mission has confirmed “disturbing” findings about massive abuse of refugees fleeing attacks by government-backed militia and Sudanese troops in Sudan’s western Darfur region, a spokesman said in Geneva yesterday.
The team probing allegations of ethnic cleansing and widespread atrocities involving hundreds of thousands of people returned to Geneva Monday after spending six days in Darfur, UN human rights spokesman Jose Diaz said.
He declined to reveal their findings, which will be detailed in a report to the UN’s top human rights body that is due to be completed at the end of the week. However, Diaz pointed to the “disturbing nature” of the information the human rights experts had gathered from Sudanese refugees in neighboring Chad last month.
“Following this latest mission, the team confirmed the assessment it made after its visit to refugee camps in Chad from 5 to 14 April,” Diaz told journalists. The United Nations has not made public the findings of the earlier visit to Chad. But, in a copy of a report on the interviews with refugees in Chad obtained by AFP two weeks ago, the mission concluded that many of the violations in Darfur “may constitute war crimes and or crimes against humanity”.
It also called for an international inquiry into the violence in the western Sudanese region, where Arab militias have been accused of attacking African inhabitants, killing them or forcing them to flee.
