Darfur women describe gang-rape horror

[Sapphire Blue]

Darfur women describe gang-rape horror
By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU, Associated Press Writer

KALMA, Sudan - The seven women pooled money to rent a donkey and cart, then ventured out of the refugee camp to gather firewood, hoping to sell it for cash to feed their families. Instead, they say, in a wooded area just a few hours walk away, they were gang-raped, beaten and robbed.

Naked and devastated, they fled back to Kalma.

"All the time it lasted, I kept thinking: They're killing my baby, they're killing my baby," wailed Aisha, who was seven months pregnant at the time.

The women have no doubt who attacked them. They say the men's camels and their uniforms marked them as janjaweed — the Arab militiamen accused of terrorizing the mostly black African villagers of Sudan's Darfur region.

Their story, told to an Associated Press reporter and confirmed by other women and aid workers in the camp, provides a glimpse into the hell that Darfur has become as the Arab-dominated government battles a rebellion stoked by a history of discrimination and neglect.

Now in its fourth year, the conflict has become the world's worst humanitarian crisis, and rape is its regular byproduct, U.N. and other human rights activists say.

(snip)

Meanwhile, more than 200,000 civilians have died and 2.5 million are homeless out of Darfur's population of 6 million, the U.N. says, and a February report by the International Criminal Court alleges "mass rape of civilians who were known not to be participants in any armed conflict."


Continued @ http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070527/ap_on_re_mi_ea/darfur_s_misery_2

[seemslikeadream]

1. A look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo

A look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U28joj6d1A

A look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMMQhHuI9_Y&mode=related&search=

A look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biEXCEOy_vs

A look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPKcgo4Es8E

A look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIM8kVSN8ug

A look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_WEY7xQEhk&mode=related&search=

Untold Suffering in the Congo

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=2&ItemID=9832

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9833

[nam78_two]

2. K&R.nt

[BlueIris]

3. K & R.

[BlueIris]

4. Kick.

Because, as is typical of anything about women, Africa, Africans or women who are African, this is sinking like a stone.

[DrDebug]

10. Kick again

Especially since it's exactly about the same reason as the War in Iraq.

Remember the telegram send from Masjid Soleiman, Iraq on May 26, 1908 which caused all of this:


"And (that He may bring) oil to make his face to shine" (Read: We have found Oil in Iraq)

And as good Christians many wars have been fought about oil as in Iraq and Darfur. Sadly there is a total taboo about the strategic and economic reasons for wars or asking the question "Who are funding the war? Who are supplying the arms?"

[Luna_C_06]

5. Kick

[BlueIris]

6. Kick.

[chiffon]

7. Thanks for posting this...This topic needs GLOBAL attention. [ nt]

[JNelson6563]

8. Dark skinned folk? No oil? *yawn*

There's no reason America should get mixed up in that!

:sarcasm:

What a wretched experience for these people. And our wealthy, "Christian" nation cannot be bothered. :cry:

Julie

[DrDebug]

9. It's all about oil

There seem to be two topics on this issue. It is ALL ABOUT OIL.

The Cold War aspect behind the Civil War in Darfur.

The two fighting sides:

Sudan People's Liberation Army supported by Chad for Chevron (United States) with partners Talisman (Canada) and Lundin (Sweden)

Khartoum supported by China for National Petroleum (China) with partners Total (France), Petronas Carigali (Malaysia)

Op-Ed: China's Crude Conscience
Ronan Farrow | The Wall Street Journal | August 10, 2006

EL FASHER, Sudan — In a squalid hut in Zam Zam refugee camp, 16-year-old Salim Adam swats flies from the livid scar where a bullet tore through his leg. Two years ago, Mr. Adam was farming with his father when the Janjaweed, a Sudanese government-backed militia who have executed a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, surrounded his village, firing rifles. "They grabbed my father. They demanded money and, when we had none, they shot him here" he says, smacking his palm against his forehead. Mr. Adam fled, gunfire at his back. Somehow, he dragged himself to a donkey. He cannot remember how long he rode across the desert before reaching Zam Zam.

The bullet that shattered Salim Adam's leg and the gun that fired it were almost certainly manufactured in China. The militiaman who pulled the trigger was likely compensated with revenues from Chinese oil purchases, which fund a majority of Khartoum's military actions. And the reason no help has come to Darfur is, in large part, because China has blocked every attempt to deploy a United Nations peacekeeping force. Though estimates vary, most data suggest that the death toll in Darfur has reached around 450,000, and is still rising.

By the time the world awakened to the slaughter here, China was already funneling money into Khartoum. Beijing's investments in Sudan now total around $4 billion. With a 40% stake each in the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Co. and Petrodar, state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. owns the largest shares of both of Sudan's national oil consortia. And in 2005, Beijing purchased more than half of Sudan's oil exports. China now relies on Khartoum for about one-tenth of its massive oil needs, placing Sudan just behind Saudi Arabia and Iran as China's largest energy supplier by volume.

It is an unholy alliance. The U.N. imposed an arms embargo when it became apparent that the Government of Sudan's military actions in Darfur were overwhelmingly directed against helpless civilians. And yet China continues to supply Khartoum with assault helicopters, armored vehicles and small arms. Last August, Beijing sold 212 military trucks to Khartoum. Chinese oil company airstrips in southern Sudan have been used by government forces to conduct bombing raids on villages and hospitals. A U.N. investigation conducted this year determined that the vast majority of weaponry used to attack civilians across Darfur is of Chinese origin.

(...)

On May 16, the Security Council finally voted on a resolution that compelled Sudan to admit a U.N. peacekeeping assessment mission. China withdrew its veto threat only after the resolution had been gutted of key language that would have allowed some U.N. peacekeepers from a force already in southern Sudan to move to Darfur. And they did so with an explicit declaration from China's Deputy Permanent Representative to the U.N., Zhang Yishan, that their vote "should not be construed as a precedent for the Security Council's future discussion or the adoption of new resolutions against Sudan."

(...)

http://www.genocideintervention.net/about/press/coverage/index.php/archives/150

Darfur: Forget genocide, there's oil
By F William Engdahl

(...)

Merchants of death
The United States, acting through surrogate allies in Chad and neighboring states has trained and armed the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army, headed until his death in July 2005 by John Garang, trained at the US Special Forces school at Fort Benning, Georgia. By pouring arms into first southeastern Sudan and since discovery of oil in Darfur into that region as well, Washington fueled the conflict that led to tens of thousands dying and several million driven to flee their homes. Eritrea hosts and supports the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), the umbrella NDA opposition group, and the Eastern Front and Darfur rebels.

(...)

Much of the arms that have fueled the killing in Darfur and the south have been brought in via protected private "merchants of death" such as the notorious former KGB operative, now with offices in the US, Victor Bout, who has been cited repeatedly in recent years for selling weapons across Africa. US government officials strangely leave his operations in Texas and Florida untouched despite the fact he is on the Interpol wanted list for money laundering.

(...)

Chad oil and pipeline politics
Condoleezza Rice's Chevron is in neighboring Chad, together with the other US oil giant, ExxonMobil. They've just built a $3.7 billion oil pipeline carrying 160,000 barrels per day from Doba in central Chad, near Darfur, via Cameroon to Kribi on the Atlantic Ocean, destined for US refineries.

(...)

Supplied with US military aid, training and weapons, in 2004, Deby launched the initial strike that set off the conflict in Darfur. He used members of his elite Presidential Guard, who come from the province, providing them with all-terrain vehicles, arms and anti-aircraft guns to aid Darfur rebels fighting the Khartoum government in southwestern Sudan. The US military support to Deby in fact had been the trigger for the Darfur bloodbath. Khartoum reacted and the ensuing debacle was unleashed in full, tragic force.

(...)

"West Africa's oil has become of national strategic interest to us," stated US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Walter Kansteiner back in 2002. Darfur and Chad are but an extension of the US Iraq policy "with other means" - control of oil everywhere. China is challenging that control "everywhere", especially in Africa. It amounts to a new undeclared Cold War over oil.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/IE25Cb05.html