African Media Coverage

December 13-31, 2008


South Africa: Mail & Guardian
“Activists accuse Sudan abductions”
Published: December 17, 2022

Activists on Wednesday accused Sudan's army and allied militias of abducting people during the Darfur conflict and forcing them into unpaid work and "sex slavery".

Sudan's government dismissed the allegations as "naive", saying rebel factions were behind most abductions in the remote region. The army said the report did not deserve a comment.

The Darfur Consortium, an umbrella organisation for more than 50 campaign groups, said it had collected the first detailed evidence of soldiers and militias seizing people during the fighting.

The report said researchers had identified about 100 abductions, most of them from 2003 to 2006. But a spokesperson, who asked not to be named, estimated thousands of abductions had taken place throughout the fighting.

Read the article here.

Kenya: The Daily Nation
“Man charged with aiding Darfur war crime court”
Published: December 23, 2022

A Sudanese man appeared in court yesterday accused of working to overthrow the state by passing on documents about a Darfur war crimes suspect to the International Criminal Court.

Lawyers said Mohamed Alsary Ibrahim was the first person in Sudan to be prosecuted for co-operating with the ICC and faces death by hanging if convicted.

An officer from Sudanese military intelligence told Khartoum north court that Ibrahim offered to pay a contact $10,000 for documents that might incriminate a government minister wanted for masterminding a series of atrocities in Darfur.

The intelligence officer, Omar Abdel, said Ibrahim had been trying to find documents to “fabricate a relationship” between Ahmed Haroun, Sudan’s state minister for humanitarian affairs, and the “Janjaweed”, pro-government militias accused of war crimes in Darfur.

The ICC has already issued arrest warrants for Haroun and a Darfur militia leader. Sudan, which is not a signed-up member of the international court, has refused to hand them over. In July, the ICC’s chief prosecutor also asked judges to issue a warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, accusing him of orchestrating genocide in the region.

Read the article here.

Kenya: The East African
“IDPs going hungry in Darfur as bandits target aid workers”
Published: December 27, 2022

When I last visited the wartorn Darfur region of Sudan two years ago, Al Salaam camp was a refuge for about 1,000 newly displaced people. Today its population hovers around 60,000.

Aside from the camp’s population, insecurity and the level of despondency have also grown precipitously during these past two years.

Prince Tucker, a World Vision aid worker with whom I served in Darfur two years ago, has been in the vanguard of providing humanitarian assistance to the region’s war-weary communities for four years.

Rampant banditry and carjackings have reduced vast swathes of South Darfur to no-go areas for Tucker, a native of Sierra Leone, and other relief workers. “We are not able to access many areas where our help is sorely needed,” Tucker said. “It’s just not safe to go there.”

The stream of Land Cruisers emblazoned with aid agencies’ acronyms has been reduced to a trickle on the byways of South Darfur.

Read the article here.