Police drove through a Darfur camp for displaced people on Wednesday, smashing makeshift homes with their trucks, a UN spokesman and Amnesty International said.
It was the second alleged government raid in two weeks on El Geer camp, near Nyala in southern Darfur. Last week, security forces forced 8,000 of the camp's inhabitants to move elsewhere -- a relocation that was condemned by the UN and the US.
"In the early hours [of Wednesday], four small truckloads of police drove into El Geer camp and they knocked over some of the shacks which the [inhabitants] have constructed," said George Somerwill, a UN spokesman in Khartoum.
He added that UN staff in the camp were present when the police drove in and they heard the police fire shots in the air.
Sudanese government officials could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.
Amnesty International said the police fired tear gas, assaulted residents including the deputy chief of the camp, and bulldozed shelters in El Geer. In an e-mail sent to The Associated Press in Cairo, the London-based rights group said the police ignored protests from UN and African Union officials.
"This attack shows a callous disregard on the part of the government of Sudan for its most basic obligations under humanitarian and human rights law," said Amnesty International.
In New York, UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said that after the police fired into the air at El Geer, "UN agencies and partner groups were immediately withdrawn from the area for their own safety."
The top UN envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk, who is in southern Darfur, is expected to visit El Geer "as soon as possible," Eckhard said.
The alleged police raid on El Geer came hours before government and rebel negotiators ended a round of Darfur peace talks in Nigeria. The two sides broke off with a partial agreement on security and refugee issues but no overall settlement to the conflict that began in February 2003.
The rebellion and a devastating counter-insurgency campaign have driven 1.8 million refugees from their homes. International agencies estimate that since March, disease, malnutrition and clashes among the displaced have killed more than 70,000 people. Many more have been killed in fighting between the rebels and government troops and allied militia, but no firm estimate of the war's direct toll exists.
Last week, security forces relocated thousands of El Geer refugees against their will and denied access to aid groups. The move was apparently in retaliation for the abduction of 18 Arabs by Darfur rebels.
Sudan denied closing the camp, and said angry Arab tribesmen had gathered in the area.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
A powerful magnitude 7.6 earthquake shook Japan’s northeast region late on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and orders for residents to evacuate. A tsunami as high as three metres (10 feet) could hit Japan’s northeastern coast after an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.6 occurred offshore at 11:15 p.m. (1415 GMT), the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said. Tsunami warnings were issued for the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori and Iwate, and a tsunami of 40cm had been observed at Aomori’s Mutsu Ogawara and Hokkaido’s Urakawa ports before midnight, JMA said. The epicentre of the quake was 80 km (50 miles) off the coast of
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
A passerby could hear the cacophony from miles away in the Argentine capital, the unmistakable sound of 2,397 dogs barking — and breaking the unofficial world record for the largest-ever gathering of golden retrievers. Excitement pulsed through Bosques de Palermo, a sprawling park in Buenos Aires, as golden retriever-owners from all over Argentina transformed the park’s grassy expanse into a sea of bright yellow fur. Dog owners of all ages, their clothes covered in dog hair and stained with slobber, plopped down on picnic blankets with their beloved goldens to take in the surreal sight of so many other, exceptionally similar-looking ones.
RSS