A State Department report detailing atrocities in the Darfur region of western Sudan concludes that the Sudanese government has promoted systematic killings based on race and ethnic origin, but officials said Tuesday that there was strong debate over whether Secretary of State Colin L. Powell should classify the violence as genocide.
State Department lawyers reviewing the report, based on 1,136 interviews collected in 19 refugee camps in neighboring Chad last month, said the evidence of rape, killing of male babies, use of racial epithets, burning of villages and displacement could easily meet the legal definition of genocide. Powell visited Darfur in June and requested the investigation.
A mother gives her ailing son dirty water in Darfur, where hunger is widespread and disease rampant.
(Jahi Chikwendiu -- The Washington Post)
|
_____Crisis in Sudan_____
•
Q&A: Darfur A brief explanation of the issues and current humanitarian situation in Western Sudan.
•
Photos: Sudan's Rebels
•
Sudan's Ragtag Rebels (The Washington Post, Sep 7, 2004)
•
U.N. Envoy to Sudan 'Wrong,' Danforth Says (The Washington Post, Sep 3, 2004)
•
U.N. Envoy Urges Sudan To Let Peacekeepers In (The Washington Post, Sep 2, 2004)
•
Rebels in Sudan Region Say No Letup in Attacks (The Washington Post, Aug 29, 2004)
•
Sudan Not Curbing Militias, Diplomats Say (The Washington Post, Aug 28, 2004)
|
| |
|
A draft of the report, which was obtained by The Post and which will be issued in its final form Thursday, says the Sudanese government in coordination with the Arab militia known as the Janjaweed sought victims who were non-Arabs. Assailants often shouted racial and ethnic epithets such as "Kill the slaves" and "We have orders to kill all blacks."
Use of the word genocide is "a political question now," a high-ranking State Department source said. "Not a legal one."
On one side of the debate, some human rights officials contend a declaration of genocide would be a powerful statement that would draw world attention to Darfur and promote efforts to halt mass killings there. However, some in the U.S. government argue that the explicit use of the word might alienate the Sudanese government and limit the United States' ability to pressure its leaders to halt marauding Arab militias, who have killed, raped and tortured black African refugees in the region.
The "primary cleavage is ethnic: Arabs against Africans," according to the eight-page report, which will be released as Powell testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Powell said Tuesday he was focusing on efforts to enhance relief operations in Darfur. "We've seen improvement with respect to humanitarian access," Powell said at a State Department briefing. "The security situation isn't as improved as we would like it to be."
But "with respect to the issue of what to call it -- genocide or not," he said, "it doesn't open any new doors that are not available to us now."
The 1948 U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defined the act as a calculated effort to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group in whole or in part. The convention calls on signatories, including the United States, to prevent and punish genocide.
Earlier this year, Congress urged the Bush administration to call the situation in Sudan genocide. Organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights have also called it genocide.
The European Union and Amnesty International, among other groups, have said they do not have enough information to determine if the situation in Darfur meets the definition of genocide.
The office of the U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan said that the expulsion of 1.2 million mainly African ethnic groups from their homes was deliberate and systematically carried out by the Sudanese government, according to a recent briefing paper on the Darfur crisis.
Tens of thousands of civilians face disease and death in squalid government camps; thousands more lack shelter and aid in hard-to-reach rebel-held areas.
As attacks continue in Darfur, the emotional debate over using the word genocide has evoked memories of inaction during previous episodes of violence.
