While African women in Darfur were being raped by the Janjaweed militiamen, Arab women stood nearby and sang for joy, according to an Amnesty International report published on Monday. The songs of the Hakama, or the "Janjaweed women" as the refugees call them, encouraged the atrocities which the militiamen committed.
The women singers stirred up racial hatred against black civilians during attacks on villages in Darfur and celebrated the humiliation of their enemies, the human-rights group said.
"[They] appear to be the communicators during the attacks. They are reportedly not actively involved in attacks on people, but participate in acts of looting," it said.
Amnesty International collected several testimonies mentioning the presence of Hakama while women were raped by the Janjaweed. The report said: "Hakama appear to have directly harassed the women [who were] assaulted, and verbally attacked them."
During an attack on the village of Disa in June last year, Arab women accompanied the attackers and sang in praise of the government and scorning black villagers.
According to an African chief quoted in the report, the singers said: "The blood of the blacks runs like water, we take their goods and we chase them from our area and our cattle will be in their land.
"The power of [Sudanese president Omer Hassan] al-Bashir belongs to the Arabs and we will kill you until the end, you blacks, we have killed your God."
The chief said that the Arab women also racially insulted women from the village, saying: "You are gorillas, you are black and you are badly dressed."
The Janjaweed have abducted women for use as sex slaves, in some cases breaking their limbs to prevent them escaping, as well as carrying out rapes in their home villages, the report said.
The militiamen "are happy when they rape. They sing when they rape and they tell that we are just slaves and that they can do with us how they wish," a 37-year-old victim, identified as A, is quoted as saying in the report, which was based on over 100 statements from women in the refugee camps in neighboring Chad.
Pollyanna Truscott, Amnesty International's Darfur crisis co-ordinator, said rape was part of a systematic dehumanization of women.
"It is done to inflict fear, to force them to leave their communities. It also humiliates the men in their communities," she said.
The UN estimates that up to 30,000 people have been killed in Darfur, and over a million have been forced to flee their homes.
Peace talks between the Sudanese government and two rebel movements broke down on Saturday when the rebel groups walked out, saying the government must first disarm the Janjaweed.
Another human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, was to publish alleged Sudanese government documents yesterday showing that it was much more closely involved with the Janjaweed than it has so far admitted.
The documents, which Human Rights Watch said it had obtained from the civilian administration in Darfur and are dated February and March this year, call for "provisions and ammunition" to be delivered to known Janjaweed militia leaders, camps and "loyalist tribes."
One document orders all security units in the area to tolerate the activities of Musa Hilal, the alleged Janjaweed leader in north Darfur.
Peter Takirambudde, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Africa division, said: "These documents show that militia activity has not just been condoned, it's been specifically supported by Sudan government officials."
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS