Salon.com > Jeevan Vasagar

Babies first

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 14:54:00 +0000

Her face is seamed and her arms are painfully slender, but Mohadien Goumar is only 45. Her neighbor Aminata Musa, who is about 60, lies barely moving on a wooden pallet, staring at the world with flat, bloodshot eyes, dependent on the charity of fellow villagers to keep her alive.

As aid agencies focus their scant resources on saving malnourished babies and children, the elderly are the forgotten victims of the crisis in Niger.

The village of Terbadeen, a Tuareg settlement of thatched huts surrounded by sand and thorny trees, has been stripped of its fittest inhabitants: Two-thirds of the men have left in search of work elsewhere.

"I have had nothing but water for two weeks," said Mohadien. "The food foreigners have sent, I have not seen it. The men who left the village said they would send food back, but no food has come."

Throughout Niger, the hunger crisis is an affliction of the poor. While people in Terbadeen starve, there is food in the markets of the nearest big village, Abalak, four miles away down a winding dirt track. And in the hotels of the capital, Niamey, breakfast coffee comes with seven cubes of white sugar lining the saucer.

Even here among the poorest, there is a hierarchy.

Facing trial

Tue, 07 Jun 2005 16:44:00 +0000

The International Criminal Court said Monday it was considering bringing charges of genocide against government officials in Sudan because of the atrocities that had occurred in the western region of Darfur. Announcing a formal investigation into the murders, rapes and massacres that have taken place in recent years, a spokesman for the court said evidence was being gathered and a list of suspects would be drawn up.

Yves Sorokobi, a spokesman for the prosecutor, said: "What we are doing now is beginning an investigation into crimes against humanity -- war crimes and possibly crimes of genocide. Our conclusions will be based on the information and evidence that we collect." He said the court had "thousands of documents."

Investigators hope to complete their work over months rather than years. Sorokobi said trials might take place in Sudan or a neighboring African country, rather than in the Hague, where the court is based. "We are considering the possibility of trials in the region. We are absolutely open to that. It depends on what can be achieved logistically. In order to conduct trials, certain people have to be in custody. They have to be held in certain conditions to ensure their own safety and security, and the safety of victims and witnesses," he said.

Determined to be counted

Thu, 31 Mar 2005 14:57:00 +0000

President Robert Mugabe defiantly predicted "a mountainous victory" for his party Wednesday night as Zimbabweans prepared to cast their votes in an election that most observers believe will be rigged. During a frantic final day of campaigning ahead of Thursday's election both the ruling Zanu-PF Party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) made their final appeals to the electorate.

Mugabe told cheering supporters in the capital, Harare: "We have never been losers, because we have always been a party of the people."

This election campaign has been less scarred by violence than previous polls in Zimbabwe, but Mugabe's opponents claim the ruling party has denied food to opposition supporters and is preparing to fix Thursday's ballot.

Army officers have been placed in charge of polling stations; ballot boxes have been made of transparent plastic so opposition voters can be identified, and critics say the electoral roll is full of flaws.

From an audit of 10 percent of the roll, one human rights group, FreeZim, estimated that the voters' roll listed up to 1 million dead people, more than 300,000 duplicate names and 1 million people who no longer live at their registered address.

Rising death toll in Sudan

Wed, 16 Mar 2005 14:33:00 +0000

More than 180,000 people have died from hunger and disease during the last 18 months of the Darfur conflict, the United Nations said Tuesday, as negotiations continued at its New York headquarters to break the deadlock on a new Security Council resolution to impose sanctions on the Sudanese government.

Brian Grogan, a spokesman for Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, said an average 10,000 Sudanese civilians were dying each month, much higher than earlier estimates. They were victims mainly of starvation or of disease in refugee camps after being driven from their villages by Sudanese soldiers and government-backed Janjaweed militiamen. The estimates exclude those killed in the fighting.

Khartoum accused the U.N. of producing the figures as a ploy to get the Security Council to take action against Sudan, and demanded evidence to back up the numbers. Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said: "Jan Egeland was here -- I met him [and] he never mentioned this number." Egeland said last week that an estimate of 70,000 was too low, but did not indicate what he regarded as a more realistic figure.

“This baby has come from Allah and I will accept him”

Mon, 06 Dec 2004 16:11:00 +0000

The gunmen made Mohammed Aadam lie with his face in the dirt while his sister was being raped. He had been sitting in his hut that morning, playing cards with friends, when the Janjaweed attacked. "The Janjaweed were shooting and people from the village were running into the forest," said Aadam, 23. "They ordered me and some of the other men to lie down on the ground. They had captured some of the women, including my sister, and we heard the women cry out as they were raped."

Ten months later, his sister Asha Mohammed has given birth to one of the many "Janjaweed babies" born after the mass rape of Darfur women. According to the U.N. and human rights groups, thousands of women were raped as their villages were razed by the government-backed Janjaweed militias that have devastated western Sudan over the past 20 months.

Deeply shaming in a conservative Muslim society, the rapes were intended to inflict a collective humiliation on the region's black African tribes. Victims say they were accompanied by beatings and racial insults.

No talk of peace

Tue, 28 Sep 2004 13:44:00 +0000

Under a nearly full moon, rebel fighters lept on to the sand from the back of their battle wagon -- a Toyota pickup truck with a machine gun on its cab and an anti-tank missile launcher slung from the wing mirror. The moonlight picked out every rock, bush and dune for miles, but these men had no fear of being seen or heard.

This region of northwestern Darfur is controlled by the Sudan Liberation Army, the rebel movement that prompted the Sudanese government to unleash the Janjaweed militia.

A cease-fire was agreed to in April, but it has been repeatedly violated by both sides; on Sunday, two policemen were shot dead in a rebel attack on a police post in south Darfur. Peace talks in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, collapsed a fortnight ago over a rebel demand that the Janjaweed disarm before they do.

In the SLA's camps, there is no talk of peace. Young men from Darfur's shattered villages have come to find an outlet for their rage. Khalid, who wore a camouflage vest and a long knife at his waist, said: "I am very angry because my father was killed, and one of my brothers, and my uncle. In the refugee camps, I have no work to do. I want to fight." He claimed to be 15 but looked younger. Rebel officers have refused to let him join up because they say he is too young, but he will not go to live with his mother, who is in a refugee camp in Chad. Instead, he helps fetch firewood and carry water for the fighters.

Hunted by death squads, a people without hope

Tue, 24 Aug 2004 12:38:00 +0000

Hawa Abdullahi's father pulls back her orange shawl to show where a bullet smashed through her upper arm. The 15-year-old girl is in pain and traumatised, but in her family she is the fortunate one. Four of her brothers are dead after an attack they blame on the Janjaweed. "Maybe God knows why this happened," said Maryam Ayacoub Solomon, the mother of the murdered boys. "I don't know. I don't know what to say -- I have no words left."

Every few days, more refugees from Darfur cross the border into eastern Chad. They all tell the same story; in recent days and weeks, there have been fresh attacks on black African villages involving Janjaweed fighters backed up by Sudanese government troops.

Despite a UN security council resolution demanding that Sudan disarms the Janjaweed, Khartoum's war against its own people goes on.

UN officials say that 11 villages close to the border with Chad are believed to have been cleared in a campaign that began a few days after the security council resolution was passed.

Nearly 500 refugees have been registered by the UN after crossing the border at Senett, near the village of Birak in eastern Chad.

Sudan accepts UN plan

Fri, 06 Aug 2004 14:17:00 +0000

Sudan appeared yesterday to have bowed to international pressure over Darfur as the UN announced an agreed plan to tackle the refugee crisis and avert sanctions.

The UN special envoy to the country, Jan Pronk, said the Sudanese government had halted military action against villages in Darfur and lifted restrictions on humanitarian assistance.

Last Friday, the UN security council gave Sudan 30 days to disarm the Janjaweed, the Arab militias deployed by the government to suppress a revolt in Darfur.

Mr Pronk told reporters in Khartoum: "The government of Sudan has to be commended for keeping its promise [on action in Darfur]. We have full access and we have to make full use of this opportunity by coming in with more food, more planes, more trucks, more medication."

He said he had agreed a series of measures with the Sudanese government and sanctions could be averted if there was substantial progress.

But the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, said yesterday Khartoum still had work to do to meet the UN's ultimatum.

He wrote in the Wall Street Journal that while the government had removed obstacles to humanitarian access, it "has not, however, taken decisive steps to end the violence".

Sudan throws anti-UN rally

Thu, 05 Aug 2004 13:26:00 +0000

Tens of thousands of demonstrators chanting anti-American slogans marched on the UN headquarters in Khartoum yesterday to protest against western troops being sent in to deal with the crisis in Darfur.

The government-sponsored rally took place as the African Union said it would increase troop deployment in Darfur from 300 to 2,000.

The Sudanese government has raised fears of a western intervention in Darfur, although no western country has pledged to send troops.

More than 100,000 protesters gathered in central Khartoum and shouted slogans attacking America and the UN, which has given Sudan 30 days to disarm the Janjaweed, the predominantly Arab militias whose murder, rape and arson has driven more than a million people from their homes. The Sudanese government has used the militias to help suppress a rebellion.

"Annan, Annan, you coward," demonstrators shouted, referring to the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan. "We will not be ruled by Americans."

A senior member of Sudan's ruling National Congress party, Mohammed Ali Abdullah, told the crowd their protest was a warning to George Bush and Tony Blair against invading Sudan.