2004-8-6
This is Steve Ember with In the News, in VOA Special English.
The United Nations is preparing to send a team of human rights
observers to Sudan. Eight observers are expected in the capital on
Sunday. Plans call for six of them to leave Khartoum and go to the
Darfur area in western Sudan. The U.N. team will supervise efforts
to disarm the pro-government groups known as the Janjaweed militias.
Sudan and the United Nations signed an agreement this week about
disarming the Arab fighters. The observers are to tell U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan if Sudan is making progress to improve
security in Darfur. On Thursday, President Bush approved ninety-five
million dollars in humanitarian aid.
The United Nations says tens of
thousands of people have been killed in Darfur in the past eighteen
months. More than one million are homeless. Almost two hundred
thousand have fled across the border into Chad. The United Nations
has described the situation in Darfur as ethnic cleansing.
Fighting began in February of last year between the Janjaweed and
two rebel groups of black African Muslims. The Sudanese government
has denied that it supports the Arab fighters.
But a U.N. investigator says there is no question that the
government of Sudan is responsible for the killings of "large
numbers of people." Asma Jahangir of Pakistan visited Sudan in June;
she presented a report on Friday. She says there is great evidence
that government forces and government-supported militias carried out
the killing together. She says killings have also taken place in
Upper Nile State.
The U.N. investigator says the government is also largely
responsible for the current humanitarian situation in Darfur. She
says millions of people are at risk. She says many will likely die
in the months to come from starvation or disease.
Last week the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution that
called on the government to disarm the Janajweed within thirty days.
If not, the resolution says Sudan is to face international action,
but it does not say what kind. Some diplomats criticized the
resolution as not strong enough.
This week, thousands of Sudanese marched to the U.N. offices in
Khartoum to protest the resolution. News reports said the government
organized the protest.
The African Union may increase its troop strength in Sudan to as
many as two thousand peacekeepers. Three hundred soldiers are in
Sudan now to enforce a cease-fire between the government and rebels
in the south. Most people in the south are Christian or animist. The
cease-fire comes after more than twenty years of civil war.
Poor farmers in Darfur rebelled after the government agreed to
share power and oil profits with the south in the future. The people
of Darfur demanded the same treatment.
In the News, in VOA Special English, was written by Jerilyn
Watson. This is Steve Ember.