Darfur genocide tops US list
2007-03-06 22:31
Washington - The continuing genocide in Sudan's troubled Darfur region was the world's worst human rights abuse last year, said the United States (US) on Tuesday in a global report that found freedoms eroding in numerous other nations, including US allies Afghanistan and Iraq.
In its annual survey of human rights practices, the state department also criticised Russia for a "further erosion of government accountability" and said China's human rights record deteriorated in some areas.
"Genocide was the most sobering reality of all," the department said in the 2006 "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices," noting that mass killings continued to "ravage" Darfur nearly 60 years after the world vowed "Never again!" following the holocaust.
Just days before senior US diplomats expect to meet Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in Khartoum, the state department lashed out at the Sudanese government, blaming its military and proxy militia for the genocide in Darfur, the western Sudan region where more than 200 000 people have died and about 2.5 million have been displaced, according to some estimates.
Blunt criticism
"The Sudanese government and government-backed Janjaweed militia bear responsibility for the genocide in Darfur," it said, adding that they, along with indigenous rebels, had and continued to commit atrocities as the four-year-old war rages unabated.
"All parties to the conflagration committed serious abuses, including widespread killing of civilians, rape as a tool of war, systematic torture, robbery and recruitment of child soldiers," said the report.
Washington first declared the situation in Darfur a genocide in 2004 when then-secretary of state Colin Powell used the word in congressional testimony, but other countries and the United Nations (UN) have refrained from using the word and some US officials have recently toned down such language.
Tuesday's blunt criticism, particularly of Khartoum, comes a day before US special envoy for Sudan Andrew Natsios is to see al-Bashir and a week before assistant secretary of state for human rights Barry Lowenkron plans to meet the Sudanese president.
UN-AU peacekeeping force
Ahead of those talks, expected to focus in part on the deployment of a hybrid UN-AU peacekeeping force to Darfur, the state department also noted that Sudan has continued to give mixed signals about its acceptance of the mission.
In addition to the crisis in Darfur, Tuesday's report said human rights conditions worsened in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In Iraq, where deadly attacks have surged despite the formation of a democratically elected government following the ouster of Saddam Hussein, "both deepening sectarian violence and acts of terrorism seriously undercut human rights and democratic progress in 2006," it said.
The Afghan government has made "important" progress on the human rights front, but its performance "remained poor" last year, the report said, attributing lapses to a weak central administration, abuses by authorities, and Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents.
- AP