Mick Hartley

UN investigators, in a report issued to the UN Human Rights Council, accuse Sudan’s government of “orchestrating and participating” in crimes in Darfur that include murder, mass rape, and kidnap:

The UN team was blocked by the Sudanese government in Khartoum from visiting Darfur, but spoke to refugees and aid workers from the region.

The five UN team members travelled to neighbouring Chad, to where many refugees have fled, and where the war itself is spreading.

There they heard reports backing up well-established accusations of serious abuses in Darfur, including mass rape, abduction, and forcing people from their homes.

“There are gross violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, the government is complicit in those crimes with the Janjaweed militia that it arms and trains,” said the head of the mission, Nobel peace prize winner Jody Williams. […]

The report is the latest in a series by the UN and other international bodies to document large-scale attacks on civilians, and to demand an international response.

Ms Williams said the atrocities detailed in the report were not new. But the investigators were framing the document in a way that was meant to demand action.

It stated that if a state was failing to protect its own citizens, “then the international community has to step up to the plate and assume its responsibilities,” Ms Williams told BBC News.

So far, the international response had been “pathetic”, she said.

“There are so many hollow threats towards Khartoum, that if I were Khartoum I wouldn’t pay any attention either,” she said.

“It is more than a tragedy. It was after Rwanda that people said ‘never again’, and here we are again… and the world sits by.”

The full report is here (pdf file).