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Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Sudan, yet more on this

US News:

WADI HAWAR, DARFUR, SUDAN--Seeing 12-year-old Adam Erenga Tribe, small and guarded, his clothing frayed, it is hard to grasp that he is the lucky one. Yet he may be the only person in his village of 300 to have escaped the attack by the dreaded men on horseback--the Arab Janjaweed militia. "I was coming home from school. I saw the village burning and the Janjaweed surrounding it," he says, the vacant look in his eyes masking the horror he witnessed. "They killed my whole family. Lots of girls were captured. I haven't seen anyone since." Similar accounts from dozens of refugees in Darfur, backed up by reports from international aid groups, provide evidence of an organized campaign by Arab Janjaweed militias, in collusion with the Sudanese government, to rid the Darfur regions of its 80 black African tribes. Made up of Arab nomadic shepherds, the Janjaweed (the word means "a man with a horse and a gun") are a sort of civilian terrorist force. Refugees in Darfur describe mass murder, razed villages, destroyed wells and markets. No less traumatic in this Muslim society are the Janjaweed's organized mass rapes of women and girls as young as 13, some victims taken by the militias as sex slaves. "What is happening here," says Mohammed Basher, political leader of one rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement, "is genocide against the Africans of Sudan."
Not a lot to add here except to reiterate that the world must stop this tragedy. We cannot allow this sort of thing to happen.

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