After Bosnia and Rwanda: the UN denies that genocide was committed in Westsudan/Darfur

As a human rights organization actively involved year after year with the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations, the Society For Threatened Peoples (SFTP)-International deplores the announcement of a UN-appointed commission on Sudan that no genocide took place in Western Sudan/Darfur. Consequently, the signatory countries of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide cannot be forced to intervene militarily in order to put an end to the genocide. "The UN repeats the mistakes it made in Bosnia (1992 to 1995) and in Rwanda (1994) as it passively watched these genocides occur over the years,” criticizes Tilman Zülch, the President of the SFTP-International. "UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has, meanwhile, advocated these wrong decisions. Even more incomprehensible is the fact that the UN is repeating these mistakes und once again watching genocidal crimes of the worst kind that humans can do to one another.

The SFTP-International sent last August a fact-finding mission to refugee camps in Tchad and put together a 100-page long document that collects all available information and reports from journalists, human rights organizations, humanitarian organizations, governmental organizations, and refugees from around the world.

According to this document, Sudan’s fundamentalist Arabic regime lets Arabic mounted militiamen systematically and continuously dispel the black African population of Darfour by bombarding and destroying its villages and neighbourhoods and setting in army units to take part in the executions and massacres. The secret service is deployed against political leaders and intellectuals and received special duties within the scope of this ethnic cleansing, not only in Western Sudan but also in neighbouring Tchad. The military arms the militiamen, equips them with uniforms, and provides them with supplies. The regional state authorities support their mobilization and recruitment.

The regime is thus responsible for the many bombardments against civilians, for the massacre of at least 117 municipalities, for targeted killings, for the systematic rape of thousands, probably of over ten thousand women and girls, for tortuousness, for mass displacement, for provoking the mass exodus of two million people, for the pursuing of refugee treks, for the destruction of probably half of the villages, neighbourhoods, harvests and orchards, for poisoning the water supplies and for systematically stealing livestock and land as well as for a blockade against humanitarian assistance help for the refugees.

The SFTP-International estimates that the total number of refugees represents two million people and the number of victims of murder or of those who fell during the exodus 120,000 people.

The SFTP-International ascertains that Sudan’s Arabic, fundamentalist islamic regime commits a crime of genocide in Darfur. Karthum systematically violates Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocides from December 9, 1948 and fulfils paragraphs (a), (b), and (c). This is made clear by the methodical annihilation of large numbers of the black African population in Western Sudan/Darfur. According to these paragraphs, genocide describes actions undertaken for the purpose of destroying a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group in part or in whole:

(a) Killing members of the group

(b) Causing severe physical or psychological damages to members of the group

(c) Imposing premeditated living conditions on members of the group designed to cause physical destruction in part or in whole

The SFTP-International calls on the United Nations to fix the mistakes it made in Rwanda and Bosnia and to obligate the signatory country of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to send intervention troops to Darfur in order to put an end to the genocide against the black African Muslim population in Western Sudan/Darfur.