U.S. Hopeful for an End to Ethnic Cleansing -- in Western Sudan This Time
by Chad Groening and Jody Brown
August 24, 2004
(AgapePress) - An assistant secretary of state says he hopes the same diplomatic efforts that ended the attacks by Muslims against Christians in South Sudan will have similar success in another war-torn area of that African country.BBC News
reports that the "campaign of terror" in the province of Darfur in Western Sudan has resulted in thousands crowding into nearby towns as they seek refuge from the attacks. And the group Human Rights Watch says it has documented a pattern of human rights violations in that area that amount to a government policy of "ethnic cleansing" of certain ethnic groups. Among the atrocities being committed upon the Fur and the Masalit people are mass murder, torture, rape, mistreatment of prisoners of war, and use of civilians as human shields. Hundreds of people are reportedly dying each day in the conflict.Lorne Craner is the Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the Department of State. He has been monitoring the slaughter of thousands of people at the hands of Arab terrorists in Darfur. The conflict there, he says, flared up just as the North-South conflict ended.
"You've had two conflicts going in Sudan. One was this North-South conflict -- and that, we were very pleased earlier this year to see finally end," the State Department official says. "It's been going on for many, many years, and that was a case where you had Arabs in the North against Christians in the South in a really bitter, nasty conflict -- with frankly some of the same methods that we've seen used in this other conflict in Darfur."
Craner says the United States will continue to push the Sudanese government to rein in Arab terrorists in Darfur -- and that he is hopeful that diplomatic efforts will be as successful as those that ended the murder of Christians in South Sudan. U.N. Ambassador John Danforth was the lead negotiator in that situation. According to Craner, the State Department has told the Sudanese government that all killing in the Sudan must stop.
It has been almost a month now since the U.N. Security Council gave the government a one-month deadline to stop the campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur. The Washington Post says there has been "no substantial improvement" in the interim -- an indication, it says, that the government is not taking seriously the Council's implied threat of sanctions.
