Government-backed militias in Sudan are still attacking civilians and are ”routinely” raping women and girls in the Darfur region of the country, human rights groups said on Wednesday.
The studies by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch came as Sudan was under growing international pressure to rein in the marauding Arab militias, known as Janjaweed.
The Khartoum government has less than three weeks to show the United Nations security council that it is making progress towards disarming the militias.
Sudanese officials on Wednesday dismissed reports of further atrocities and the president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, accused the US and Europe of exploiting violence in western Sudan for their own ends.
”America and Europe have aims that do not include the safety and comfort of people in Darfur,” Bashir said in an interview published in Lebanon’s al-Mustaqbal on Wednesday. He said Sudan was the victim of a media campaign aimed at diverting attention from violence in Iraq.
”Yes, there is killing, displacement and migration, but is the Darfur issue the only issue in the world? What about Palestine and Iraq?” Bashir asked.
He discounted claims by human rights groups that his government was organising a campaign to drive Darfur’s non-Arab people from their land. He said it was a decades-old dispute between ”farmers and herders”.
After years of conflict between Arab nomads and African farmers over scarce resources in arid Darfur, a remote area the size of France, rebels launched a revolt in February 2003, accusing Khartoum of arming the Janjaweed to drive black farmers from their land.
One million people have been displaced by the fighting and two million need aid.
”Nothing said by the government of Sudan should be believed. They are serial liars,” Peter Takirambudde, the Africa director of Human Rights Watch, told The Guardian on Wednesday. ”What we see on the ground is what we are reporting. Violent atrocities against civilians are continuing. It is irrefutable. Our team on the ground is witnessing it. The government is denying it to try to avoid international intervention.”
The US-based organisation said on Wednesday that Sudanese armed forces and the Janjaweed militias in Darfur continue to attack men, rape women and steal livestock with impunity.
”The Sudanese government insists that it is taking significant measures, but the continuing atrocities in Darfur prove that Khartoum’s claims simply aren’t credible,” said Takirambudde.
The Human Rights Watch report said the Sudanese government is backtracking on the deadline set by the UN security council resolution and is instead beginning to incorporate the Janjaweed into the official police and other security forces.
”Incorporating the Janjaweed militias into the security services and then deploying them to protect civilian ‘safe areas’ is the height of absurdity,” said Takirambudde. ”The Sudanese government needs to bring war criminals to justice, not recruit them into positions of responsibility.”
Amnesty International accused the Sudanese government of rounding up scores of people in Darfur because they had spoken to visiting officials and journalists about the situation.
The detainees include 15 men arrested in the Abushouk camp near El Fasher after a visit to Darfur by the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, on June 30 and five people taken after a July 27 visit to the same camp by the French foreign minister, Michel Barnier.
”The Sudanese government should give assurances that none of those arrested will be tortured or ill-treated while in detention and that Sudanese people can speak freely about Darfur without fear of reprisals,” Amnesty said. – Guardian Unlimited Â