Sudan Update
Caribpundit reports Khartoum is arming the militias that kill their own people:
A New York-based human rights group says it has evidence that the Sudanese Government has been arming the militia accused of killing thousands of people in the Darfur region. Human Rights Watch says it has secret documents which implicate high-ranking Government officials in a policy of supporting the militia.
Oh like we couldn’t figure that out when government planes bombed these villagers.
And they were singing about it
While Janjaweed militiamen were doing the dirty deed, Arab women stood nearby and sang for joy, stirring up racial hatred against black civilians during attacks on villages in Darfur. Many women were taken as sexual slaves and prevented from escaping by having their limbs broken.
News Article by BBC posted on Sudan.net Rains a curse for Sudan’s refugees (We saw this coming, actually we’ve been counting down. Too bad the UN didn’t.)
The Sahara’s ferocious winds swirl through the camps for a million displaced Sudanese, and the people scatter. Then the heavens open and the rains begin their torrential pounding. Most nights now across Darfur the displaced huddle in makeshift shelters, bracing themselves against the elements.
Whole families sit upright all night, as the rain pours through the reed roofs of their shacks.
The rains here are a curse in more ways than one. Roads have become mired in mud, making it difficult for aid to get through. And the rains have brought disease to the camps, by flushing sewage and filth into the drinking water.
Now the World Health Organisation’s concern is that epidemics like cholera may break out too. Already many children in the camps have diarrhoea, vomiting and measles.
Because of insecurity and difficulties of the terrain the food has not reached all the people in Murnei camp. Most families say they ran out of food completely more than a week ago, and many families have been surviving since by sharing out rations intended to save just the weakest infants.
In a tented hospital for about the worst cases the children are emaciated, and tormented with the pain of starvation. Margaret Bell a nurse said: “Out in the community (one camp) there are 40 deaths a week that we know of.” On a bed in one of the makeshift hospitals a one-year-old girl, Asha, lies covered in sores and lesions, her skin peeling. She does not have the strength to hold her head up.
Whilst watching her daughter starve Asha’s mother has been slowly losing her mind.“Our village was burnt to the ground,” her grandmother said. “We can’t go back. Nine people in our family were killed. The attackers took everything we had. There’s not enough food here for us, and I’m worried Asha will die but we can’t go home we’ll be killed”.
International organisations have called the situation in Darfur the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. They have also warned that thousands more may die if more help does not arrive quickly.
Thousands may die? How about tens of thousands may die or hundreds of thousands of mostly women and children because the men are already dead.
