Darfur killings not genocide, says UN group
/A special United Nations commission has
decided that two years of violence in the western Sudan region of
Darfur was not genocide but "crimes against humanity with ethnic
dimensions", according to leaks of the report in the US. The
commission, led by the Italian judge Antonio Cassese, documents
breaches of international human rights law and other war crimes, and
names individuals who may have acted with "genocidal intent". But it
failed to find evidence that the government in Khartoum, widely accused
of backing the militias, had a specific policy of exterminating a
particular ethnic group, the Los Angeles Times reported. The report is
to be made public this week, after it goes to the Security Council. But
it could set off a new dispute between the US and its key allies. In
September, the State Department said the murder of tens of thousands of
people in Darfur, and the forced uprooting of 1.8 million more, did
constitute genocide. It spoke of a pattern of targeted violence,
co-ordinated by the government and committed by state-backed militias.
Even more problematic however than semantics could be the report's
leaked recommendation that war crimes and human rights violations
should be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC), an
institution backed by Europe and most African countries, but
strenuously opposed by the US. As a result, the Bush administration is
caught in a tug-of-war, between its desire to punish those responsible
for what it has declared a genocide, and its dislike of the ICC, which
it believes will turn into a vehicle for anti-Americanism, and
politically motivated prosecutions of US troops and officials. [more]
- Sudan, Oil, and Human Rights [more]
- Oakland lawmaker calls on world to aid Darfur Lee joins star of Rwanda film to decry genocide [more]
- Sudan ambassador Khidir Haroun Ahmed denies claims of genocide in the Darfur region [more]
- Annan urges swift action on Darfur, Security Council undecided [more]
