Genocide charges against Sudan’s president, as Darfur tragedy drags on
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It was back in 2003, Britain’s Independent recalls, in the Darfur region of western Sudan, that “[a]rmed groups from the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes launched a rebellion…, protesting [about] their marginalization. Sudan’s response was a brutal counter-insurgency, in which civilians were routinely targeted by government forces and [the] Janjaweed militia.” The Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa are Sudan’s largest sedentary tribes. By contrast, the Janjaweed’s members have come from nomadic, Arabic-speaking tribes; they’ve been fighting viciously with their sedentary rivals over access to water and the allocation of land. Yesterday, prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, the Netherlands, charged Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir “with genocide…, accusing him of masterminding a campaign to ‘destroy’ three tribes in Darfur, killing 35,000 people and persecuting 2.5 million refugees.” Although Bashir “did not directly carry out attacks himself, he was the mastermind with ‘absolute control,’ the prosecutor said.” (Independent)
admin @ July 16, 2008