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 Darfur: Arrest war criminals, not aid workers
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Darfur: Arrest war criminals, not aid workers
Tuesday May 31st, 2005 14:21.
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Press Release
Government Must End Harassment of Aid Agencies, Restrictions on Free Speech
(London, May 31, 2005)
Donor governments and the United Nations must condemn the Sudanese government's arbitrary arrest and intimidation of aid workers, Human Rights Watch said today. The Sudanese government should drop charges against all aid workers, including the head of Médecins Sans Frontières in Khartoum, Paul Foreman, who was arrested yesterday and released on bail.
The Sudanese authorities detained a second Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff member in Nyala, South Darfur, early this morning. Foreman's arrest followed escalating public threats against MSF in the Sudanese media over the past few weeks. Sudanese authorities claim that an MSF report on rape published on March 8 violated Sudanese law and that the report is "false." The precise charges against MSF are unclear but-according to an article in the Khartoum-based pro-government newspaper Al-Ra'i al-Aam include spying, provision of false information and disturbing the peace.
The government concluded that the report was false, according to Sudan's Humanitarian Aid Commission, when MSF did not respond to government demands to produce the evidence of rapes. MSF's report stated that the organization had treated more than 500 women and girls in Darfur in a period of four and a half months, and it called on local authorities to do more to stop the abuses. The government sought names and other details, in violation of the doctor-patient privilege.
In addition to the MSF staff, more than twenty aid workers have been arbitrarily arrested, detained or threatened with arrest in the past six months in Darfur, according to Human Rights Watch research. International media are increasingly being denied visas to the region.
"It's appalling that instead of arresting the people who have burned hundreds of villages and attacked thousands of women and girls, the Sudanese government is detaining aid workers," said Peter Takirambudde, Africa director for Human Rights Watch. "This is a perfect illustration of how far the Sudanese government is prepared to go to silence criticism and deny its own responsibility for massive atrocities in Darfur."
Widespread rape committed by government-backed Janjaweed militias and Sudanese troops in Darfur has been consistently documented by the United Nations, the A.U. mission monitoring ceasefire violations in Darfur, human rights groups including Human Rights Watch, the media and other fact-finding missions visiting the region. It is impossible to estimate the number of women and girls who have been subjected to sexual violence, particularly given the stigma attached to the crime, but it is likely that hundreds if not thousands of women and girls have been raped over the past two years.
"This attack on the bearer of bad news is another assault on free speech," said Takirambudde. "Under its peace accord with the southern rebels, the government is supposed to have restored all civil and political rights. There is no conceivable security or military reason for preventing publication of this kind of public health information."
The Sudanese government established committees on rape in mid-2004 to investigate the claims in each state. However, according to Human Rights Watch interviews in Khartoum with members of these committees, the methodology used was a review of pre-existing police reports and public meetings at internally displaced persons camps. After submission of an initial report, no further work was done by these committees. Although largely a whitewash, the final report by the Sudanese government-appointed National Commission of Inquiry did acknowledge that there were cases of rape in Darfur.
Given their distrust of most national government institutions, and the shame attached to rape, most displaced women and girls do not report the crime to the police, and certainly did not report sexual attacks at any public meetings. The victims instead sought medical treatment from foreign medical organizations such as MSF, with assurances of confidentiality.
Until recently, Sudanese law required rape victims to file a "Form 8" with the police prior to receiving medical treatment in a public facility. Despite assurances from the Sudanese Ministry of Justice in late-2004 that the requirement for the Form 8 had been withdrawn, reports continued in this year that authorities in many states still require this from rape victims. Nongovernmental health and human rights organizations have protested that this deters women and girls from seeking medical help as needed. "The United Nations, the African Union and donor governments need to draw the line here and ensure that the intimidation stops and that aid workers and rape victims are protected," Takirambudde said. "If this harassment continues, the lives of millions of Sudanese who depend on aid will be put at even greater risk."
More than two million people among Darfur's population of six million have been forced from their homes by widespread bombing, burning and other atrocities committed by Sudanese government forces and allied militias starting in 2003, initially part of a government effort to combat two rebel groups in Darfur.
The majority of internally displaced, formerly farming families, are confined to camps in Darfur which they are unable to leave for fear of further attack, including rape and sexual violence. They are entirely dependent on the humanitarian aid provided by the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations such as MSF. Apart from those displaced, more than a million other residents of Darfur are partially dependent on food aid due to the collapsed economy and trade resulting from the forced displacement of farmers and continuing high levels of insecurity.
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Re: Darfur: Arrest war criminals, not aid workers (Re: hala alahmadi)
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UN alarmed by arrest of MSF aid worker in Sudan
Tuesday May 31st, 2005 12:59
GENEVA, May 31 (AFP) --
The UN's human rights chief, Louise Arbour, voiced serious concern Tuesday about the arrest of an international aid worker in Sudan who led damning research on rape in the conflict-ridden Darfur region.
Louise Arbour
"This is a very disturbing development," the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement.
Top Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) official Paul Foreman, was detained in Khartoum Monday and accused of crimes against the Sudanese state. He was later released on bail.
Although the Sudanese judiciary declined to justify Foreman's arrest, MSF believes it was due to his refusal to hand over evidence he used in a damning report about rape by pro-government forces in Darfur.
The medical aid group told AFP on Tuesday that its regional coordinator in Darfur, Vincent Hoedt, had also been arrested in the western city of Nyala.
MSF was also accused of "espionage, publication of false reports and of underming the Sudanese state," following Foreman's arrest, the group's Dutch branch said in a statement.
Arbour insisted that MSF had done "nothing more than record these horrendous crimes and try to focus critically needed attention on them".
"Rape and sexual violence are very real features of the life of the women of Darfur," she added.
"This is the conclusion of our monitors, of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur and of all serious investigations into the unfolding human rights crisis in the region."
Foreman recently published a report, entitled "The Crushing Burden of Rape: Sexual Violence in Darfur", which said that around 500 women had been treated for rape in four and a half months in the western Sudanese province.
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Re: Darfur: Arrest war criminals, not aid workers (Re: hala alahmadi)
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Second humanitarian worker with MSF in Sudan detained
Tuesday May 31st, 2005 14:03
KHARTOUM, Sudan, May 31, 2005 (AP) --
Sudanese authorities have charged one foreign aid worker with spreading false information and detained a second after their agency spoke out about alleged rape cases in Darfur.
Vincent Hoedt, 36, has worked for MSF since 1996 and was born in Rotterdam, Holland. Vincent has worked for MSF in Colombia, Liberia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Zambia, Albania and Nigeria. Vincent worked first as a logistician, later as project co-ordinator and head of mission for MSF. (MSF).
Susanne Staals, spokeswoman for the Dutch branch of Medicins Sans Frontieres, said by telephone from Amsterdam on Tuesday that the group's Darfur coordinator had been arrested in the western region that morning and authorities were taking him to the capital. She said no other information was immediately available on the arrest of Vincent Hoedt, a Dutch aid worker.
The day before, Paul Foreman, the head of the group's operations for all of Sudan, was detained and questioned before being charged with spreading false information and released.
Sudanese Prosecuting Attorney Mohamed Fareed said in a statement Monday that a case has been filed against Foreman and he was asked not to leave the country until interrogations are complete.
The Sudanese government was angered by the MSF report, published in March, that said its doctors working in Darfur had collected medical evidence of 500 rapes over 4 1/2 months. The report said more than 80 percent of the victims reported that their attackers were soldiers or members of government-allied militia. The government denied the report.
"Upon interrogation, (Foreman) was not able to substantiate the claims nor could he provide any documents to this effect," Fareed said, complaining that the allegations were published on the group's Web site and quoted by the United Nations.
Fareed said if such crimes had really happened the culprits would be punished by prison and fines.
Staals said her group stood behind its report but that its sources' privacy had to be protected because they had provided information in a doctor-patient relationship.
"We are intrigued by the fact that they are charging us, an agency investing millions in the saving of lives, rather than the people responsible for the rape," said Geoffrey Prescott, another spokesman for the Dutch branch of MSF.
In Geneva Tuesday, U.N. human rights chief Louise Arbour expressed concern over the Sudanese government's move.
Targeting the humanitarian community for doing its work "will not only do a disservice to the people of Darfur, it will draw attention away from the real criminals, those who continue to rape, kill and pillage with impunity," Arbour said.
The Darfur conflict erupted when rebels in the western region took up arms against what they saw as years of state neglect and discrimination against Sudanese of African origin. The government is accused of responding with a counterinsurgency campaign in which government-backed Arab militiamen known as Janjaweed committed wide-scale abuses -- including killings, rape and arson -- against the African population.
More than two years of conflict in Darfur has killed at least 180,000 people, many from war-induced hunger.
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Re: Darfur: Arrest war criminals, not aid workers (Re: hala alahmadi)
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British humanitarian worker with MSF detained in Sudan
Tuesday May 31st, 2005 00:03.
AMSTERDAM, May 30, 2005 (AP)
Sudan's government detained a British aid official whose agency had angered it with a report detailing hundreds of cases of rape in the troubled Darfur region, the Amsterdam office of Medecins Sans Frontieres said Monday.
Paul Foreman
"This is an obvious attempt to intimidate humanitarian groups working in Sudan," Susanne Staals, spokeswoman for the Amsterdam office of Medecins Sans Frontieres, said of Monday's arrest of Paul Foreman, who headed the group's Dutch mission in Darfur.
"We're outraged," Staals said.
Sudanese authorities could not immediately be reached for comment on Foreman's arrest. In the past, they have said the MSF report on rape was untrue.
The Sudanese government had been angered by report MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders, published in March on rape in Darfur.
The Netherlands' MSF branch reported that its doctors working in Darfur had collected medical evidence of 500 rapes over 4 1/2 months. The report said more than 80 percent of the victims reported that their attackers were soldiers or members of government-allied militia.
"They clearly were not happy with the report, but we haven't heard anything from them directly until today," Staals said.
The Darfur conflict erupted when rebels in the western region took up arms against what they saw as years of state neglect and discrimination against Sudanese of African origin. The government is accused of responding with a counterinsurgency campaign in which government-backed Arab militiamen known as Janjaweed committed wide-scale abuses -- including killings, rape and arson -- against the African population.
More than two years of conflict in Darfur has killed at least 180,000 people, many from war-induced hunger.
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Re: Darfur: Arrest war criminals, not aid workers (Re: hala alahmadi)
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Monday, 30 May, 2005
Sudan charges MSF man over report
Foreman is charged with crimes against the state
The head of the Dutch wing of Medecins San Frontieres (MSF) has been charged with crimes against the Sudanese state over a report on rape in Darfur.
Paul Foreman was arrested on Monday and later released on bail.
The state crime prosecutor said Mr Foreman had failed to hand over evidence on which the report was based. The charity says it is confidential.
Pro-government militia in Darfur are accused of mass rape and killings, but the government denies complicity.
Jail term
The BBC's Martin Plaut, who recently travelled to Darfur, says the charges are part of a concerted drive by the Sudanese authorities to end western criticism of their behaviour in the region.
He says that many Sudanese believe western aid workers have given information on alleged human rights abuses in Darfur to the United Nations, which has passed a sealed list of 51 war crimes suspects to the International Criminal Court.
That document was a non-political document only based on humanitarian concern of MSF which has done an excellent job of helping victims of rape
UN's Jan Pronk
Our correspondent says that in March, aid workers were threatened over their reports of mass rape.
"He (Mr Foreman) is on bail and not allowed to leave the country, " MSF Holland spokesman Geoff Prescott told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.
"He's been charged with crimes against the state by the government on the grounds that they didn't seem to have appreciated our report on rape in Darfur".
Mr Foreman had said "medical privilege" and patient confidentiality prevented him from handing over documents requested by the authorities.
Another reason for respecting the information, Mr Prescott explained, was because women "made pregnant as a result of rape outside wedlock can be arrested by the authorities" in Sudan.
He said the charity stood by its report, which he described as "accurate and truthful".
Sudan's state crime prosecutor said he had come to conclusion that the report was false.
Sensitive
Mr Foreman could face up to three years in prison if found guilty of falsifying the report.
How many deaths in Darfur?
It is not yet known when he will appear in court.
"We would like to reiterate that we think it's the people who perpetrate rape in Darfur who should be in court, not the people who are trying to bring medical assistance to the victims," Mr Prescott said.
The report - The Crushing Burden of Rape: Sexual Violence in Darfur - which came out in March, was based on the treatment of 500 women over a four-and-a-half month period in Darfur.
It details nearly 300 of these cases, with several written up as witness statements, Mr Foreman said.
Contrary to Islam
Rape is a sensitive subject for the Sudanese government.
The government had always maintained that, as it runs contrary to Islam, rape is not taking place on the scale that numerous United Nations and international agencies have claimed.
Jan Pronk, head of the United Nations in Sudan, said he deplored the arrest.
"That document was a non-political document only based on humanitarian concern of MSF which has done an excellent job of helping victims of rape," Mr Pronk told the BBC.
MSF says it has a significant presence in Darfur, with more than 300 international staff and 3,000 local staff treating some one million patients.
The UN says that about 180,000 people have died in the two-year conflict in Darfur, and more than two million driven from their homes.
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Re: Darfur: Arrest war criminals, not aid workers (Re: hala alahmadi)
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Salam Hala
The use of rape and sodomy is an old tactic used by Nazis, Fascists, supremacists, dictators, etc. to terrorise, subjugate and silence the victims especially in societies where the victim is criminalised.
What is happening now is an attempt to silence the victims who suffered enough and their response does not fit the torturers expectations. These women are courageous and we must all support them, otherwise we will be complicit in a heinous crime.
Darfur exposed our reality. Indifference is not an excuse and silence is support for genocide.
Let us not mince our words. If Moslems continue to support the neo-Nazis actions in Darfur then they will have no moral argument when dealing with their perceived injustices.
Regards
Zaki
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Re: Darfur: Arrest war criminals, not aid workers (Re: hala alahmadi)
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الأخت هالة الاحمدي
الحكومة باتت تتوجس خيفة من الصمت المطبق علي نشاط المدعي العام. فهي تعلم جيدا أن الأدلة الميدانية هي التي ستهوي بها الي هاوية الأدانة. لذلك ليس من المستغرب هذا التهجم الشرس علي المنظمات الأنسانية. فقد فشلت كل مسرحياتها في فبركة الصلح بين القبائل و قمم شرم الشيخ و طرابلس و أديس أببا. The pressure is on
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Re: Darfur: Arrest war criminals, not aid workers (Re: hala alahmadi)
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Sudanese govt accused of trying to silence aid workers
Wednesday June 1st, 2005 02
LONDON, May 31, 2005 (AP)
Rights and aid groups say the arrests of two officials from an international humanitarian group that spoke out about rapes in Darfur show how far the Sudanese government will go to keep news of atrocities off the world's front pages.
The foreign workers feeding, clothing and succoring the people of Darfur have an all too intimate view of the region's horrors. The Dutch branch of Medicins Sans Frontieres, for example, based much of its March report on rape on what doctors treating victims had seen and heard.
MSF said its doctors collected medical evidence of 500 rapes over 4 1/2 months, and that more than 80 percent of the victims reported that their attackers were soldiers or members of government-allied militia. The Sudanese government is accused of responding to a two-year-old rebellion in Darfur with a counterinsurgency campaign in which militiamen known as Janjaweed committed abuses _ including killings, rape and arson _ on such a scale that some have labeled what is happening there genocide.
Monday, the Medicins Sans Frontieres overall director for Sudan was charged with spreading false information and told not to leave the country pending trial. Tuesday, its Darfur coordinator was detained and brought to the capital.
Spokeswoman Susanne Staals said there are situations in which her group, also known as Doctors Without Borders, would confine itself to delivering aid and not also work to spread information. But MSF could not remain silent on Darfur "because the scale of the violence is immense and no action is being taken to protect victims," she said in a telephone interview from Amsterdam.
Leslie Lefkow, a Human Rights Watch researcher who has tracked developments in Darfur, said targeting Medicins San Frontieres was part of a pattern that included the arbitrary arrest and detention of or threats against more than 20 workers from several foreign agencies over the last six months.
Lefkow said aid workers and foreign journalists also were finding it increasingly difficult to get permission to visit Sudan, all part of what she called an attempt "to draw the veil over Darfur so that it drops off the international agenda."
Sudanese officials denied there was a campaign to interfere with aid agencies' work.
"There should not be any mixing of legal action taken against somebody and humanitarian action," Ahmed Adam, an official in Sudan's Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "Legal procedures here or anywhere in the world are no impediment to humanitarian work."
In Geneva, U.N. human rights chief Louise Arbour said Tuesday that targeting the humanitarian community for doing its work "will not only do a disservice to the people of Darfur; it will draw attention away from the real criminals, those who continue to rape, kill and pillage with impunity."
Journalists working in Darfur have found aid workers willing to talk about the atrocities they have witnessed and been told about, but often on condition of anonymity, not even allowing the names of their organizations to be used. They say they fear that if the Sudanese government knew who was speaking out, it would punish them by barring them from working in Darfur.
For months after the conflict broke out in early 2003, Sudanese officials severely limited international aid organizations' access to Darfur. Humanitarian workers were only allowed in after protracted negotiations and international pressure, and many feel their status remains precarious.
"We hope we can continue our work and continue to speak out," MSF's Staals said, adding the world must know what is happening in Darfur so that it can be moved to act and stop the violence.
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Re: Darfur: Arrest war criminals, not aid workers (Re: hala alahmadi)
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US condemns arrest of foreign aid workers in Sudan
Wednesday June 1st, 2005 00:30
WASHINGTON, May 31, 2005 (AP)
The United States on Tuesday condemned the arrest by Sudanese authorities of foreign aid workers helping people in the western Darfur region and called on the government in Khartoum to stop harassing them.
"We are fully opposed to this arrest and condemn it," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
He said Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick is going to Sudan later this week and will discuss Darfur and all matters related to it with government officials.
Boucher sahd the United has "called upon the Sudanese government to immediately stop its heavy-handed campaign of harassment and intimidation against Medecins sans Frontieres personnel and humanitarian aid groups who are providing essential services to the people of Darfur."
He said aid workers were providing vital medical care and counseling to thousands of women who continued to be attacked and raped in Darfur.
Boucher said several international, nongovernmental organizations have documented human rights violations committed against innocent civilians under the control of the Sudanese government.
Sudanese authorities have charged one Medecins Sans Frontieres worker with spreading false information and detained a second who is the agency's coordinator in Darfur.
The Darfur conflict erupted when rebels in the western region took up arms against what they saw as years of state neglect and discrimination against Sudanese of African origin.
The government is accused of responding with a counterinsurgency campaign in which government-backed Arab militiamen known as Janjaweed committed wide-scale abuses -- including killings, rape and arson -- against the African population.
More than two years of conflict in Darfur has killed at least 180,000 people, many from war-induced hunger.
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Zaki
Mohamed Suleiman
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست