Uma história do Darfur

«OUTSIDE the back window, Bakerloo Line trains rattle past. Downstairs someone makes tea. But in the upstairs living room of a nondescript house off Lambeth Road in South London a slight, softly spoken young man tells a story of atrocities in a far-off land that is anything but mundane.

Dily, a Sudanese Arab, recounted how for three years he and his fellow Janjaweed charged the farming villages of Darfur on camels and horses, raking the huts with gunfire and shouting: "Kill the slaves. Kill the slaves."

He reckons that he attacked about 30 villages in all, and cannot count the people he shot. The villages were destroyed, he said, and the men, women and children killed - sometimes with the help of government airstrikes. Survivors "would be left there ... Sometimes they made it to camps but mostly they died of thirst or starvation".

Dily is a rarity in that wretched conflict. Filled with disgust, he escaped and last month, with the help of people-smugglers, reached Britain, where he is seeking political asylum.

Dily contradicts the Sudanese Government's claims that it has no control over the Janjaweed - the predominantly Arab "devils on horseback" who have driven twomillion of Darfur's black Africans into refugee camps and killed at least 200,000.

He claimed the Government deceived innocent Arab shepherds like himself into joining the Janjaweed, saying they had to defend their communities against attack by Darfur's black African rebel groups. They were trained and armed by Sudanese soldiers, ordered by the Government to attack Darfur's villages and given military support. The Janjaweed was formed for ethnic cleansing, he insisted. "Why (else) would you attack villages, kill people, displace them and kill them in their thousands?".

In: The Australian News

Este testemunho confirma o que já há muito era evidente, um genocídio ordenado pelo próprio governo do país. Nada foi feito para travar o genocídio, este governo não foi levado à justiça. Sabemos desde o final de Julho, que uma força da ONU irá finalmente para o Darfur. Que força? Que países? Quando? Procuro essa resposta em vão. Os telejornais do meu país preferem dedicar cerca de 40 minutos ao casal McCann...