Sudanese authorities on Saturday rejected the US Congress' declaration that the violence in Sudan's Darfur region constitutes genocide.
The US Senate and House of Representatives voted unanimously on Thursday for resolutions urging US leaders and the international community to begin "calling the atrocities being committed in Darfur by their rightful name: genocide."
Al-Tigani al-Fadhil, undersecretary at the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Khartoum, said that the congressional resolutions were biased, unfair and far from the truth. He said that the genocide allegations both exacerbate the Darfur conflict in western Sudan and undermine efforts by the African Union to head off the humanitarian crisis in the region.
Al-Fadhil vowed that his government would mount an anti-US campaign over Darfur to explain Khartoum's position to the relevant regional and international institutions.
He warned that further steps on Darfur by the international community would undermine the ongoing peace process in Sudan's long-running civil war.
US President George W. Bush on Friday demanded that the Khartoum regime halt atrocities by government-linked Janjaweed Arab militias against black African tribes in Darfur, but he stopped short of calling the conflict genocide. The US State Department is assembling evidence on the Darfur violence but has not asserted that the crisis meets technical definitions of genocide.
By widespread estimates, 30,000 Darfur civilians have been killed, more than 130,000 ref-ugees have sought sanctuary in neighboring Chad, and more than 1 million Darfur people fleeing the violence are displaced within Sudan.
Sudan's Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Ibrahim Mahmoud, said on Saturday that his ministry had spent US$2 million on medical needs in Darfur and sent 250 medical staff to alleviate health conditions as the rainy season affects western Sudan.
Reports have grown in the last week of widespread disease due to unhygienic conditions in Darfur. The Sudanese government is still insisting that conditions have improved for internal refugees in the region.
Mahmoud said that the Musa refugee camp in the southern Darfur town of Nyala had been evacuated, with 4,390 displaced families voluntarily returning to their original homes in northern Darfur. He also declared western Darfur free of rebels, whose actions may have precipitated the Janjaweed militia attacks.
The Sudanese government demanded that the international community condemn Darfur rebels for their own humanitarian violations and asked the world to put pressure on the rebel groups.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in