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Amnesty International was the first international non-governmental organization to visit Sudan and meet with senior members of the Sudanese government since the Darfur crisis began. Here is a special report from AI Secretary General Irene Khan, based on an interview with Jungwon Kim.
By Irene Khan
First Impressions
When I arrived in al Geneina, in western Darfur, the first thought that actually struck me was what a poor place it was. There was not an inch of tarmac in the entire town, not even at the airport where the plane landed — there was only a dirt track. Logistics were a nightmare. It took three hours to travel 37 kilometers [23 miles] through the countryside in a four-wheel drive. On the way to one village, we drove along a dry riverbed because there were no roads.
We drove through so many villages, abandoned after government-backed militia, known as the Janjawid. Wasps had taken over the huts, which were broken. In one hut, there was a child's shoe lying on the path near the doorway.
In a place called Hibila Kanari, we saw village after village that had been burned down. The huts, made of reeds and grass, were gone, but there were clean patches where they had once stood with fresh grass sprouting up.
Camels grazed nearby, and in a way, that expressed in a microcosm the conflict that is taking place in Darfur between sedentary agriculturalists and nomads. But what the scene did not show was how the government intervened by arming and supporting militia who attacked the farmers.
There is a huge amount of banditry and lawlessness in the countryside because the old arrangements the tribes had with one another have totally broken down. Government forces and the rebels are still fighting. And government-supported militia are still attacking civilians and villages.
Refugees in Their Own Country
The camps for internally displaced persons (IDP) were initially ad-hoc, in that people just left their villages and made their way toward towns, where food and help would be available. In some cases people just went where water was available and set up camp. There was one camp with 11,000 people; prior to the conflict there had been nothing there.
It has been extremely difficult for the international community to get its act together because of the large numbers of internally displaced people who do not fall within the ambit of any particular United Nations agency. You have the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to take care of the refugees in Chad, but in Darfur alone there are 1.2 million displaced people living in camps and villages. You have organizations that are providing health care, organizations providing food, organizations providing other services — but you don't have anyone managing the camps overall.
Some people have shelter, others don't. The material is of very poor quality — plastic sheets and sticks. Conditions are really poor — it's worse than an urban slum. People told me that if the situation does not become more secure, they plan to cross the border to Chad. But the people providing assistance are facing a huge dilemma: if you actually establish well functioning camps for the displaced persons, then you are crystallizing the problem of displacement. People would like to go home so they don't lose the land; they have already lost their cattle. If they go home now, however, they get killed. The government told us about one village where the people had returned after fleeing attacks. But when we visited, we found that these people had not actually returned home. The original residents had fled across the border to Chad or the camps in al Geneina after the Janjawid attacked. Other people from surrounding villages that had also been attacked eventually moved into the deserted village. So there is a shifting population, which is going to make it even more difficult for people to eventually go home. It is a dismal situation.
Stories of Suffering
In Riyadh camp, the women gathered to sit down and tell us their stories. It was easier to talk to the women because they were more willing to sit down and talk about what actually happened to them, their children, their families. One woman who was sitting across from me on the other side of the circle wanted to say something, so I sat down beside her. She grabbed my hand and looked into my eyes, and she started telling her story in Arabic. All the other women were dead silent, and the interpreter relayed her story. Militia attacked her village on the ground, and the Sudanese air force bombed. So many men were killed, she said, that there were no men left to bury the dead. She and another woman sitting in the circle buried seven men. When it became dark, they could not bury the rest of the bodies, so they put them under a shelter for the rest of the night. But the Janjawid saw it, came in, and burned the shelter and the bodies.
After that, they walked for 60 days — the women and the children of the whole village — and she said that all she could think about was hunger and thirst, hunger and thirst. For five days they had nothing but water, and they had to ration it. One cup per person, to make sure the children got enough water. They moved from their village to a camp, and then to another camp, because that camp was under attack. She said she had nothing–even the clothes she was wearing had been given to her by others.
Violence Against Women
We heard many, many reports that when girls or women left the camps to collect firewood, they would be attacked. Militias have used rape as a tool of war to humiliate the enemy and force them to leave their villages, and this is still happening in camps. I spoke with one rape survivor who was just 15. She had gone with three other girls to collect firewood. Five men attacked them. The other girls managed to run away, but two men caught and raped this girl. She had just recently been married, but her marriage had not been consummated because her husband is in southern Sudan. He doesn't know that she was raped. She sat with her back to us as she told her story because she could not face us, and as we were leaving, she whispered to the interpreter that she is pregnant. Here was a virgin bride who is now pregnant, terrified about what will happen when her husband finds out. We met other women who had been raped and then abandoned by their families and their husbands.
It is difficult to put a figure on the sexual violence, but for our July report we interviewed 100 women in refugee camps in Chad and collected evidence of 250 cases of rape. Some were multiple rapes, some women watched other women being raped. It is obviously a huge problem. From the government there is only total denial, which makes it difficult to deal with the situation. The minister of the interior told said to my face that Muslim men do not rape. This denial was impossible to understand. But what incentive would there be for a woman to make up a story that would lead her husband to abandon her? What reason would a young girl have to make up a story that would so stigmatize her that she would never be able to get married? It seems to be a widespread problem, yet these women are receiving no medical care and no counseling. They are going through the physical and psychological trauma alone. A medical worker in one camp told us of some 60 women who had been raped; nine were pregnant. In every case, the family moved away so they would not be recognized.
Authorities
Sudanese authorities, police, and military are supposed to be guarding the camps. There was an agreement between the Sudanese government and the United Nations to increase security, so the government has beefed up police force by recruiting new officers for these camps. In some cases, the new officers have come from other parts of Sudan, but in other cases the government has actually recruited them from Darfur. The displaced people claim that those who were recruited from Darfur are actually Janjawid.
There have also been many situations in which the Janjawid have been seen with the police or members of government. In fact, one shouldn't really speak of the Janjawid, one should speak of the government-supported militia, because that is what they are. They share vehicles, they share bases.
In one camp, people told us the militia actually walked through the camp with their arms, and these were actually the same Janjawid who had forced people from their villages.
So when they saw these militia you can imagine their fear.
Personal Reflections
During the civil war in Bangladesh, I was lucky enough not to have ended up in a refugee camp. I did not suffer the way these people are suffering. But what struck me was the sameness of it. What I went through was in 1971, yet in 2004 the world seems not to have learned. Back then, as now, the Pakistani army used rape as wapon of war. Women and children are still being displaced, people killed, villages burned. When I first saw the situation in the camps, I felt despair and anger, because the day before, the Sudanese government had told us to our faces that it was all a bunch of lies. But when I sat and listened to those women telling me about how their families had been killed, yet speaking in strong voices about how they had walked so many miles ... they are survivors, and it gave me hope that they will come through it. 
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