| Sudanese government arming protecting militias { July 20 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active) http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/20/international/africa/20suda.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/20/international/africa/20suda.html
July 20, 2004 Rights Group Says Sudan Aids Abuses By WARREN HOGE UNITED NATIONS, July 19 - An international human rights group said Monday that it had Sudanese government records showing that the authorities in Sudan are recruiting, arming and protecting the Arab militias attacking black Africans in the Darfur region in a campaign that United Nations officials have called ethnic cleansing.
Officials in Khartoum, Sudan's capital, have denied reports of complicity with fighters held responsible for the deaths of 30,000 people and the displacement of more than a million. They have answered the international outcry over the crisis with vows to disarm the militias and curb the violence.
"What these documents show is there is a need to go past the fiction maintained by Khartoum that there is a serious distinction between the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militia that the government has sponsored," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
In a news conference at the United Nations, Mr. Roth deplored the delay in obtaining a Security Council resolution placing sanctions on Sudan's leaders, and he said the time had come to cease trusting Khartoum's claims that it will head off the problem and its pleas for time to do so.
"The Khartoum government is trying to have it both ways maintaining a façade of cooperation with the international community but in fact doing relatively little to rein in the ongoing atrocities in Darfur," Mr. Roth said.
Both Secretary General Kofi Annan and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell went to Darfur this month to pressure Sudanese officials, but a United States-sponsored draft resolution has run into delays on the Security Council from countries interested in giving Sudan time to comply with its promises to act.
Mr. Roth displayed the Arabic documents and English translations of them and said they had been authenticated by Sudanese sources that the human rights group had found reliable in the past.
One, dated days after the Feb. 9 public declaration by the Sudanese president, Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, to "end all military operations in Darfur," ordered provincial officials instead to increase recruitment and support fighters.
Another, a month later, called for additional "provisions and ammunition." A third laid out plans for resettling lands from which black villagers had been evicted or eliminated.
Mr. Roth said his group had also turned up evidence that instead of disarming Janjaweed warriors, the government was incorporating them into the new police and security forces it was creating in the name of combating the militias.
Mr. Roth ridiculed the draft Security Council resolution, which does not call for sanctions against Sudanese leaders, only restrictions on travel and money of Janjaweed officials. "Freezing bank accounts and restricting travel for people who don't have bank accounts and don't travel won't do any good," he said.
Sudanese Militiamen Are Sentenced
KHARTOUM, Sudan, July 19 (Reuters) - A Sudanese court sentenced 10 Arab militiamen to amputation and six years in jail on Sunday in the first conviction of Janjaweed fighters for looting and killing in the Darfur region, according to a court document obtained here.
The ruling said the militiamen were convicted under articles pertaining to waging war, killing, armed looting and the possession of weapons without a license.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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