March 13, 2007 in Nation/World

U.N. report accuses Sudan of war crimes

• Print
• Email
• Share

UNITED NATIONS – A high-level U.N. mission to Darfur reported Monday that the Sudanese government had orchestrated human rights crimes against its own people and urged that leaders of Sudan’s government and militias be charged with war crimes.

But Khartoum is successfully blocking U.N. attempts to stem the violence, organizing opposition to the mission’s report and stepping back from its agreement to accept a joint U.N.-African peacekeeping force in the region.

Sudan’s government “has manifestly failed to protect the population of Darfur from large-scale international crimes, and has itself orchestrated and participated in these crimes,” according to the 35-page report by a team commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council in December.

It added that rebels “are also guilty of serious abuses of human rights” in the fighting against government forces and their allied militias. In four years of conflict, more than 200,000 villagers have died and more than 2.5 million have fled their homes, according to the U.N.

The Human Rights Council will consider adopting the report Friday, but Sudan’s allies are trying to thwart it, said human rights advocates.

Khartoum had blocked the team, led by U.S. Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams, from visiting the western region, so the mission had to rely on interviews with refugees across the border in Chad. The conclusions, say opponents, are “compromised.”

The report recommends that officials from Sudan’s government and allied militias be tried for war crimes. The International Criminal Court already has named a militia leader and a state minister as suspects for working together to organize attacks against civilians.

Darfur is one of the top issues being discussed at the Human Rights Council, which is trying to establish its credibility after previous sessions focused mainly on Israel. The council replaced the largely discredited Human Rights Commission, which had been taken over by “arsonists rather than firefighters,” said Mark Lagon, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for international organizations.

The report comes days after Sudanese President Omar Hassan Bashir rejected a plan for the U.N. to share control of a new peacekeeping force with the African Union. In a letter delivered Thursday to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Bashir insisted that the AU keep full command of a planned joint force of 22,000 to augment the overstretched 7,000 AU peacekeepers now in Darfur. U.N. regulations say that it must control the peacekeeping operations that it funds.

British Ambassador to the U.N. Emyr Jones Parry said Bashir’s letter was an attempt to renegotiate a hard-won agreement to deploy the U.N. troops and foreshadowed months of more delay.

“It’s a major setback,” he said Monday.

U.S. and European Security Council diplomats have said it is time to impose sanctions on Sudan and its leaders for allowing the violence to continue. But veto-holding members China and Russia have resisted sanctions, arguing that the penalties would cause Sudan to break off the little cooperation it has offered the U.N and strand the people of Darfur.

No comments on this story so far. Add yours!