In a joint operation in the Darfur region of Sudan, government troops working with Arab militias detained 136 African men whom the militias massacred hours later, Human Rights Watch has said. Human Rights Watch has documented dozens of attacks by Arab militias, known as janjaweed, in almost a month of research inside Darfur. "The janjaweed are no longer simply militias supported by the Sudanese government," said Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch. "These militias work in unison with government troops, with total impunity for their massive crimes." The 136 men were then taken in army lorries to nearby valleys where they were made to kneel before being killed with a bullet in the back of the neck.

The U.N. Commission on Human Rights last week adopted a watered-down resolution addressing alleged atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region and rejected a U.S. move to vote on the more strongly worded, original draft resolution it had co-sponsored with the European Union (Agence France-Presse, April 23). It also decided to appoint an independent expert on the situation of human rights in Sudan for a period of one year. Fifty members of the U.N. rights body voted for the weaker resolution, which was drafted as a compromise between the European Union and a bloc of African states.

Cape Town radio man Zane Ibrahim was taken off an international flight minutes after it landed at Baltimore airport by United States Homeland Security personnel and interrogated for almost 12 hours. Ibrahim, an award-winning journalist and managing director of Bush Radio, had flown to the US from Cape Town via Amsterdam to deliver a keynote address on 10 years of South African democracy at a conference at Goucher College, near Baltimore.

"Never again", pledges a world, which last week commemorated a million Rwandans who died in the 1994 genocide. Yet in Sudan's western Darfur region a similar catastrophe is unfolding amid a deafening silence. "The only difference from Rwanda is the numbers," said last week the UN humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, Dr Mukesh Kapila. Human Rights Watch has accused Khartoum of crimes against humanity. Amnesty International charges the regime with breaking the Geneva conventions. Western governments fear disrupting the peace talks which they are mediating between Khartoum and its southern opponents for the last 6 months, trying to resolve 20 years of violent conflict in the south of Sudan. The international community talks of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, but dares not refer to genocide.

There is no doubt that the painful memory of the 800,000 victims of the Genocide in Rwanda will live with us forever. For many years to come, we will continue to unearth the remains of children, women and men hacked to death in one of the most frenzied, planned and organised massacres ever witnessed by the world.

For the past ten years we said never again, we made resolutions, we set up commissions and tribunals, we organised conferences … yet Genocide was revisited this very year, Rwanda's Tenth year. Still sore and raw in our memories, the Genocide of Rwanda has made way to that of Darfur.

Same crimes, same atrocities and same disregard to human lives. In the name of greed, hatred and spite, the Janjaweed, the Sudanese government armed militias and very much equivalent to the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi of Rwanda, have killed, looted, burnt, and raped their neighbours. Like vultures, they have cleansed villages from their people and destroyed the dreams of entire communities.

In the space of a few months more they have uprooted from their homes more than one million people and reduced them to statistics for the UN and for various humanitarian organisations. The early warning signs were very much present in Darfur. For more than three decades, indigenous Africans - Fur, Massaleet and Zaghawa to name but a few - were at the mercy of successive ruthless regimes, military as well as the so-called “democratically elected” government of Sadiq el Mahdi (1986-89).

Ruling by the gun and with the gun they imposed a religious-ethnic-sectarian ideology on the country. Their proxy killers, Muraheleen in the South and Janjaweed in Darfur, implemented various scorched-earth strategies to take over land, pastures and water points from their legitimate owners. For years, the international community and us Africans, deserted Darfur. ‘Il n'est pire sourd que celui qui ne veut pas entendre’ (so we closed our eyes and turned away) from the plight of the people of Darfur.

Better not to see, not to hear and not to know was the general attitude. Now, there is some hope, or should we say, there was some hope when two weeks ago, a cease-fire agreement was signed in N'djamena between the Darfur fighters and the Sudanese government.

The 45-day cease-fire that was to come into effect on Sunday 11 April was mainly meant to guarantee safe passage for humanitarian aid, free prisoners of war and especially disarm militias. The ceasefire is good news and a first step to stop the killing but it requires the immediate dispatch to Darfur of an international monitoring team of observers, military and civilian, to prevent further killing, stop the continued displacement of the population and secure humanitarian assistance to the people.

Today, after ten days, where do we stand? Recently, Kofi Annan has pointed out that UN peacekeepers "are no longer restricted to using force only in self-defence” and that they are also “empowered (to protect) local civilians threatened with imminent violence." At the time of the Genocide of Rwanda, Kofi Annan was Under Secretary General for UN Peace Keeping Operations (PKO) and we all know what happened. Today he is UN Secretary General, he is Alpha Dog, but will he give his marching orders to “armed” peacekeepers?

Again and again Khartoum has broken its agreements, prevented a UN human rights team from entering the country to investigate the widespread atrocities committed in Darfur, delayed humanitarian workers to reach the displaced, denied entry to independent observers, turned away the media, closed the borders. The list of Khartoum's violations is too long to continue.

- On the humanitarian front, reports indicate that “nearly 3 million people are beyond the reach of aid agencies trying to provide assistance, and mortality rates in the region are possibly as high as 1,000 per week”.

- On the military front, the ink was hardly dry on that farcical cease-fire agreement before government-backed Janjaweed Arab militias were back into action. Mounting attacks against civilians in Mastrey, a farming locality south of Al Geneina (Western Darfur) and south of Nyala, the capital of Southern Darfur. Despite denying any violation of the cease-fire, Khartoum's request to “postpone” the trip of the chief of the UN Emergency Relief clearly indicates that the fighting is still continuing and that the Janjaweed have not been disarmed.

Shall we give Khartoum the credit of the doubt when instead of disarming the Janjaweed the Sudanese government is providing them with military costumes and integrating them into its regular forces and into the much-hated Popular Defence Forces (PDF)?

Now, as Khartoum's “official” killing machine they have been posted in and around Nyala, capital of Southern Darfur, preventing the return of the refugees. They are attacking internally displaced people and preventing them from returning to their homes. They are occupying the farmland and villages of the Fur farmers they chased away earlier, and refusing to allow them to retake possession of what remain from their homes.

Posted on the borders with Chad, they are preventing anyone crossing into Darfur. Aid agencies allowed in the region have reported that “Sudanese soldiers” have even beaten back women searching for food and firewood. By enrolling the Janjaweed into its regular forces, Khartoum is not only protecting its proxy killers, but also it is covering up its own crimes against the people of Darfur.

The European Union (EU) has put forward a resolution calling for a special Rapporteur to monitor human rights abuses in Sudan, but the vote was postponed until April 22 at the request of the African group. Coordinated by the government of Congo-Brazzaville, the African Group has consistently blocked scrutiny of African governments regardless of their human rights records.

Isn't it true that the well being and the safety of a country's nationals is the first and foremost duty of a responsible government? Isn't it true that that duty is enshrined in national constitutions in Africa as it is elsewhere in the world and that it figures also in the Charter that governs the African Union? Indeed the African Union has announced from Addis Ababa that it will deploy military observers next week to the Darfur region to monitor the ceasefire.

According to Said Djinnit, AU's Commissioner for Peace and Security, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and Namibia have agreed to send military officers to be deployed in the region. Discussions are under way in N'djamena and in Addis for the arrangements but reports from the Chadian capital are grim and nothing has been decided as we go to press.

The Sudanese government and the Darfur fighters are to meet again next week in the Chadian capital to iron out a definitive settlement to the conflict, whereby the political issues that have driven the people of Darfur to rebel, will be addressed.

The most crucial issues are land and water points and as redistribution of farmland is high on Khartoum's agenda, Fur leaders are suspicious about the recent Idriss Deby-Omar el Beshir's meeting in N'djamena. The Fur believe that to quell any dissent among the Zaghawa, on either side of its borders, the Chadian president would favour them in any future political settlement between Khartoum and fighters. Such arrangements would be in line with the “divide and rule” policy that Khartoum pursued for years in the South.

I doubt whether the people of Darfur can still trust any one to come to their help. Already they have lost faith in a government that has devoted its time and efforts to usurp them from their land, kill their children and force the survivors into exile.

Now it is the turn of the African community to fail them. We reported here in Pambazuka News 112 that the challenges facing Africans and the African Union are enormous. On each and every front - economic, social, scientific and political - the continent is “yet to fulfil its potential”. Ten years after Rwanda and in the wake of Darfur, many African political and civil society activists are calling for the establishment of an “early warning mechanism” for detecting any attempt, by groups or governments, to violate human rights in any part of the continent.

DEADLINE UPDATE FROM THE AUTHOR: The five-member delegation of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has just left Geneva for Darfur, after weeks of waiting for permission to travel into the region. However, in an interim report, based on interviews carried out by the team with refugees in camps along the Chadian borders, the OHCHR lists numerous cases of murder, rape, arbitrary killings and expulsion, committed against the Black African communities of Darfur. These are extremely serious accusations that amount to "crimes against humanity".

* Send comments on this editorial - and other events in Africa - to For more news and information on the situation in Sudan, please visit the Conflicts and Emergencies section of Pambazuka News.

* Eva Dadrian is an independent broadcaster and Political and Country Risk Analyst for print and broadcast media, who currently works as a consultant for Arab African Affairs (London) and writes on a regular basis for AFRICA ANALYSIS (London), for Al Ahram HEBDO Echos Economiques and Al Ahram WEEKLY (Cairo) and contributes to Africa Service BBC WS (London). Published reports include: Religion and Politics in North Africa; The Horn of Africa: Country Risk Analysis; The Nile Waters: Risk Analysis; State and Church in Ethiopia; Policing the Horn of Africa; Religion and Politics in Sudan; Can South Sudan survive as an independent state?

* NOTE FOR EDITORS: Please note that this editorial was commissioned from the author for Pambazuka News. While we are pleased that several print publications have used our editorials, we ask editors to note that if they use this article, they do so on the understanding that they are expected to provide the following credit: "This article first appeared in Pambazuka News, an electronic newsletter for social justice in Africa, Editors are also encouraged to make a donation.

* CORRECTION: Please note that Patrick Bond, the author of last week’s editorial (Pambazuka News 152: After the South African election, rhetorics and realities), has pointed out that the reference to more than 50 Landless People’s Movement activists arrested on 14 April should have read “more than 60”. For the latest news on this issue see the Land and Land Rights section of this issue.

Madam is white and bourgeoise. She likes to shoe-shop, watch soap operas and pose as a liberal of Johannesburg's wealthy northern suburbs. Her 80-year-old mother likes gin and tonic, rugby and firing her catapult at black street traders. Their black maid, Eve, wields a feather duster and plots in vain to wangle a pay rise. A decade after apartheid fell, characters in the cartoon strip Madam and Eve are icons of the new South Africa. Elections last week passed off peacefully and on 27 April the country will celebrate democracy's tenth anniversary with hymns to racial reconciliation. But the storylines in Madam and Eve betray the enduring edge in racial relations. Madam's mother beams as snow falls. 'Thousands of snowflakes landing everywhere. What can be more beautiful than a white South Africa?'

When Raven Naidoo entered university in the 1980s, he couldn't study engineering because of his Indian ancestry. "I was only allowed into certain universities that didn't offer the courses I wanted," he says. "To become an engineer, I had to apply to the Minister of Education to get permission to study, and they said no." It was just one example of the absurd levels to which the previous apartheid government stooped in order to enforce the privileges of a white minority, he says.

In 2002, allegations of sexual exploitation of refugees by humanitarian workers in West Africa rocked the humanitarian world. Workers stood accused of abusing their power by trading access to scarce relief supplies for sex. The UN and its implementing partners responded by establishing codes of conduct and stronger performance standards for humanitarian staff. Two years later, however, despite the increased attention to the issue, conditions are ripe for another public sexual exploitation scandal in Liberia.

The number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan's western region of Darfur has risen to one million, the United Nations said on Tuesday. In a report issued in New York, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that the situation in Darfur was compounded by shortfalls of shelter, clean water, food and health-care supplies. It warned that "all funds contributed for relief efforts in Darfur so far have already been exhausted", noting that the UN expected to revise its humanitarian appeal for the region beyond the US $115 million requested earlier this month.

Medecins Sans Frontiere-Belgium said on Wednesday it had sent an emergency medical team to a sector of the Democratic Republic of Congo's border with Angola, following an announcement by the Angolan government that was expelling another 18,000 Congolese illegal diamond miners. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs had already reported the arrival of 68,000 exhausted Congolese at the DRC border provinces of Bandundu, Kasai Occidental, Kasai Orientale and Katanga. "There have been massive expulsions for ten days now," Gilbert Gitelman, OCHA's field coordinator, told reporters on Wednesday in Kinshasa, "families have been separated, intrusive body searches have been conducted on women, children have given laxatives to expel hidden diamonds, and women and even some men have been raped in public."

Human rights defenders “form the base that regional and international human rights organisations and mechanisms build upon in the promotion and protection of human rights” and that “as a result of their involvement in the struggle for human rights, the defenders are often the first victims of human rights violations,” according to the United Nations. Africa in general and particularly the DRC is characterize by the persistence of actions that directly or indirectly prevent or hinder the work and security of individuals, groups or organisations working to promote and protect human and peoples' rights, including the growing risks faced by human rights defenders and their families.

In northern Uganda war has raged for 18 years, and shows no signs of abating. People have grown tired of the government's pledges that it will soon end the rebellion by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), which claims it is fighting to establish a government based on the Ten Commandments. Increasingly Ugandans are asking for talks between the government and the rebels. Over the past two decades the war in northern Uganda has forced 1.5 million people to flee their homes. Twenty thousand children have been forcibly recruited to fight by the LRA.

A human rights rally will be held outside Swaziland, after security forces blocked a planned gathering at the weekend by pro-democracy groups who intended to condemn the government's draft constitution. "We will now restage [the event] in another country that recognises human rights," said Kislon Shongwe, an official with the banned political party, People's United Democratic Movement.

The Somali reconciliation conference sponsored by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) is scheduled to reconvene in a week's time, according to an IGAD source close to the talks. Preparations for the final phase of the talks, being held in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, were proceeding smoothly, said the source. "We are in the process of bringing in traditional elders from Somalia. We expect that exercise to take about a week. We will then proceed to phase three of the talks," he told IRIN.

Hundreds of rebel fighters in Liberia converged on the central town of Gbarnga last Thursday to hand over their guns to United Nations peacekeepers as the country began a relaunched disarmament scheme. Clutching AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, fighters from the rebel group LURD (Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy), assembled at a disarmament site at a farm owned by exiled former President Charles Taylor.

Scores of human rights activists on Friday demonstrated in the streets of the Kenyan capital Nairobi against what they called "blatant violation of human rights across the country". The demonstrators raised banners that condemned the increase of rapes, extra-judicial executions and inability of the government to offer security to Kenyans. The Kenya Human Rights Commission, a non-governmental organisation which organised the demonstration, presented a memorandum detailing rights violations to the justice ministry.

The Southern Africa Human Rights NGO Network (SAHRINGON), consisting of at least 50 human rights NGOs' in the region, has noted with regret the recent kidnapping, assault and torture of a fellow human rights defender Been Masudi Kingombe by security forces in the town of Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo. Kingombe is the Executive Director of the Centre for Human Rights (CDH) based in Lubumbashi, DRC.

Darfur has been described as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today, with an estimated one million people displaced since fighting intensified early in 2003. The UN’s emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, recently characterised the situation as ‘ethnic cleansing’. With the hungry season approaching, violence continuing despite a recent ceasefire agreed at peace talks in Chad, and humanitarian agencies unable to access the majority of the at-risk population, there is a clear risk of large-scale famine mortality. This Briefing Note draws on a variety of sources and on thematic research previously conducted by the Humanitarian Policy Group to highlight some of the key humanitarian issues in the context of Darfur.

A breakdown of the current fragile ceasefire in the Darfur region of Sudan could trigger a further, rapid escalation in the violence leaving the international community helpless to respond with sufficient speed to save lives, warned Minority Rights Group International (MRG) this week. "The situation in Darfur is an immediate test of the resolve of the United Nations to act upon its pledge never again to allow genocide,” stated the rights group amid reports of continuing attacks and violence in Darfur in breach of the ceasefire.

Since February 2003, Sudan's western province of Darfur has been the site of an extremely violent conflict between the province's nomadic Arab tribes, supported by the government in Khartoum, and the native African settled peasant tribes. The present conflict started in February 2003 and has rapidly developed into one of the most violent military confrontations on the continent. There have been an estimated 30,000 casualties, one million people are displaced within the province and over 120,000 have fled into neighbouring Chad.