Chad kidnap 'Western plot'
2007-11-15 07:25
Khartoum - President Omar Bashir has accused a French charity that allegedly attempted to fly 103 children from neighbouring Chad to Europe of being part of a Western plot to spread Christianity in Sudan.
Bashir said the charity wanted to take the children, who it said were from Darfur, and have them "return back to Sudan as missionaries," the independent Darfur newspaper Al Sahafa reported. Bashir made the comments during a Muslim clergy conference in Khartoum on Tuesday.
Al Sahafa quoted Bashir as saying: "The West pushes its nose into our belief and calls for changing our educational curriculum and our garments."
The charity, Zoe's Ark, said the children it planned to fly out of Chad were orphans from Sudan's Darfur region. France's Foreign Ministry and others, though, had cast doubt on the claim that the children were orphans from Darfur, where fighting had forced thousands to flee to Chad.
Aid workers who interviewed the children had said a majority of them reported living with at least one adult they considered a parent and that many appeared to be Chadian.
In all, 17 Europeans, including three journalists and flight crewmembers, were arrested on October 25. The journalists and flight crewmembers were later released.
Violence erupted in Darfur in western Sudan in February 2003, after rebels from Darfur's ethnic African Muslims took up arms against the Arab-dominated government.
More than 200 000 people had been killed and 2.5 million forced to flee their homes - many to neighbouring Chad.
Critics accused Sudan of retaliating by arming local Arab militias known as the janjaweed, and the government was blamed for widespread atrocities against civilians. The government denied the accusations.
- AP