The Sudanese government has orchestrated war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur and resisted international attempts to intervene, according to a report yesterday from a high-level UN human-rights team that was itself barred from the restive region by Sudanese officials.
The team, led by Nobel peace laureate Jody Williams, urged stronger UN Security Council intervention, sanctions and criminal prosecution.
Sudan's government "has manifestly failed to protect the population of Darfur from large-scale international crimes, and has itself orchestrated and participated in these crimes," according to the report to the UN Human Rights Council, which had commissioned it during an emergency session last December.
The EU's representative at the council, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said the world would have to act on the report's description of "the ongoing, cruel human rights abuses."
"The international community won't remain silent," he said.
"War crimes and crimes against humanity continue across the region," the 35-page report said. "The principal pattern is one of a violent counterinsurgency campaign waged by the government of the Sudan in concert with janjaweed militia, and targeting mostly civilians. Rebel forces are also guilty of serious abuses of human rights and violations of humanitarian law."
The report said important steps had been taken by the international community, including the African Union and the UN, but "these have been largely resisted and obstructed, and have proven inadequate and ineffective."
The team said the UN Security Council should deploy the proposed UN-African Union peacekeeping force and provide full support to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Prosecutors at the ICC in The Hague, Netherlands, last month linked Sudan's government to atrocities in Darfur, naming a junior government minister as a war crimes suspect who helped recruit, arm and bankroll the desert fighters known as the janjaweed.
"All UN Security Council and AU Peace and Security Council resolutions should be fully implemented, including those relating to travel bans and the freezing of funds, assets, and economic resources of those who commit violations," it said.
It said rape was widespread across Darfur, but that Sudanese authorities were doing little to prevent the attacks or investigate the crimes.
"Arbitrary arrest and detention in Darfur by government security forces continue," the report said, adding that there had been a wave of arrests of Darfuris in the Sudanese capital Khartoum in recent months.
There also have been curbs on free speech and "credible information on torture, inhumane and degrading treatment by national security and military intelligence during attacks and in the treatment of detainees."
Anti-government rebels were also to blame for human rights abuses including the rape and torture of civilians, the report said.
Williams said in a letter to Mexican Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba, the council's president, that the Sudanese government had ``consistently refused'' to cooperate with her and her team, even after an appeal by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Although the team was unable to enter Sudan, it held numerous consultations with a wide range of aid agencies working in the region and was also briefed by officials of the African Union in Addis Ababa, the report said.
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