Sudan threat: We will turn Darfur into a graveyard

Sudan promised to turn Darfur into a graveyard on July 14 as it reacted with fury to charges laid by an international prosecutor accusing President Omar al-Bashir of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The threat was made by an official in Darfur after Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), called for the arrest of Omar al-Bashir for his government's ruthless campaign of violence in the war-torn region. Outlining his case in The Hague, Moreno-Ocampo said that al-Bashir resorted to the alleged crimes after a rebellion by three ethnic groups in Darfur. He asked the court to issue an arrest warrant before 2.5 million more displaced people died a slow death. The Sudanese government responded by staging rallies in Khartoum and El Fasher, the capital of north Darfur, where about 1,000 demonstrators chanted: "We don't need Ocampo, we don't need the ICC." Idris Abdullah Hassan, the town's deputy mayor, told the crowd: "We say to you, President al-Bashir, that the people of Darfur will go with you wherever you go, and Darfur will be the graveyard for the enemies of Sudan." Al-Bashir described the charges as lies and said that the ICC had no jurisdiction in Sudan. According to the charge sheet, al-Bashir "masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa groups" during a campaign of ethnic persecution in the Darfur region that the UN estimates has cost 300,000 lives in five years. "Al-Bashir failed to defeat the armed movements so he went after the people," Moreno-Ocampo said in his statement. "His motives were largely political. His intent was genocide. For over five years, armed forces and the militia/Janjawid, on al-Bashir's orders, have attacked and destroyed villages. They then pursued the survivors into the desert." Moreno-Ocampo alleged that al-Bashir took the decision to start a genocide in March 2003, instructing the army to quell the rebellion and not to bring back any prisoners. "It is clear that any government has the right to control armed rebellions and the right to control its territory," he said. "But no government can commit a genocide to control their territory." During the 2003-05 period, the villages of the three ethnic groups were targeted and overrun, the prosecution alleges. Since then, the main weapons of the genocide had been rape, hunger and fear. He added: "The most efficient method to commit genocide today in front of our eyes is gang rapes, rapes against girls and rapes against 70-year-old women. Babies born as a result have been called Janjawid babies and this has led to an explosion of infanticide. Al-Bashir is executing this genocide without gas chambers, without bullets and without machetes. The desert will do it for them... hunger is the weapon of this genocide as well as rape." The prosecutor said that it would be up to three judges, from Brazil, Ghana and Latvia, to decide whether to uphold his charges. Aid agencies had pulled nonessential staff out of Darfur before the announcement. Many were ordered to stay at home for fear of anti-Western demonstrations. "The biggest short-term concern is to our programs and our ability to work here safely," one humanitarian worker said. "Long term there's a fear of how it will impact on the security situation in Darfur and in the south, whether it will lead to more fighting, closure and harassment of camps and whether rebels will use it as an excuse to step up attacks." The UN also withdrew nonessential staff, and international peacekeepers were put on high alert, in anticipation of reprisals from government-run militias. The Deputy Speaker of Sudan's parliament, Mohammed al-Hassan al-Ameen, issued a thinly veiled warning to peacekeepers. "The UN asks us to keep its people safe, but how can we guarantee their safety when they want to seize our head of state?" al-Ameen said. Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, appealed to the Sudanese Government to ensure the safety of UN personnel. "I am very worried but no one is above the process of law. Justice and peace must go hand in hand," Ban said. Tanzania, which holds the chair of the African Union, said that the indictment process could destabilize Sudan and called on the ICC to drop it. The judges are expected to take two or three months to assess the evidence against al-Bashir on three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of war crimes. Two other senior figures already face war crimes charges, but Sudan has refused to hand them over.