Sudan Accused of Threatening Aid Workers
Tuesday May 31, 2005 9:01 PM
By DONNA BRYSON
Associated Press Writer
LONDON (AP) - Sudanese officials detained a second international aid worker Tuesday in what humanitarian groups call an effort to intimidate those who speak out about rape and other atrocities in Darfur. The agency said it would not be deterred.
The Sudanese government is accused of responding to a 2-year-old rebellion in Darfur with a counterinsurgency campaign in which militiamen known as Janjaweed committed abuses - including killings, rape and arson - on such a scale that former Secretary of State Colin Powell and others have labeled genocide.
The Dutch branch of Medecins Sans Frontieres released a report in March that said MSF doctors collected evidence of 500 rapes over 4 months, with more than 80 percent of the victims identifying their attackers as soldiers or members of government-allied militia.
The MSF director for Sudan, Paul Foreman, was charged with spreading false information Monday and told not to leave the country pending trial. Its Darfur coordinator, Dutch aid worker Vincent Hoedt, was detained Tuesday. No other information on his arrest was immediately available, MSF spokeswoman Susanne Staals said.
``The scale of the violence is immense and no action is being taken to protect victims,'' Staals said by telephone from Amsterdam, Netherlands, in explaining why the branch released the report, angering the Sudanese government.
-more-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5043423,00.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
