Government-sponsored actions... Options

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Tens of thousands of civilians have been murdered and thousands of women raped in Sudan’s western region of Darfur by Sudanese government soldiers and members of the government-supported militia sometimes referred to as the Janjaweed. About 2 million civilians have been driven from their homes, their villages torched and their property stolen by the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed.

Some of the victims have escaped to neighboring country of Chad, but most are trapped inside Darfur. Thousands die each month from the effects of inadequate food, water, health care, and shelter in a harsh desert environment. All are afraid to return home because the countryside is not safe.

The ethnic and perceived racial basis of the violence has been documented by the U.S. Department of State, the United Nations, independent human rights organizations, and international journalists. The Sudanese government primarily has targeted the civilian population of the Fur, Zaghawa, and Masaalit ethnic groups, sometimes referred to as "Africans." The government's Janjaweed allies are drawn from some of Darfur's "Arab" tribes.

Sudan's Khartoum-based government is fueling ethnic and racial violence by using the Janjaweed militia as proxies against Darfur insurgents who launched a rebellion in early 2003.

But it is civilians who are suffering.

Government-sponsored actions include:

INFLAMING ethnic conflict

IMPEDING international humanitarian access, resulting in deadly conditions of life for displaced civilians

BOMBING civilian targets with aircraft

MURDERING and RAPING civilians

Darfurians who have fled the violence provide chilling testimony. One refugee told New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof that “the Arabs want to get rid of anyone with black skin. . . . There are no blacks left [in the area I fled].”

The death toll exceeds 100,000 and may be more than 400,000. And the crisis continues—the lives of hundreds of thousands more hang in the balance today.
http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/alert/darfur/

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The Museum has issued a Genocide Watch for Sudan.

An estimated two million people, mostly civilians, have died in Sudan and four million have been displaced in the past 17 years as the result of civil war. Primary responsibility for this devastation belongs to the Sudanese government, a military regime based in the north. The principal victims include the Dinka and Nuer peoples in southern Sudan and the Nuba of central Sudan. The Committee's warning is based on the following government actions:


A divide-to-destroy strategy of pitting ethnic groups against each other, with enormous loss of civilian life


The use of mass starvation as a weapon of destruction


Toleration of the enslavement of women and children by government-allied militias


The incessant bombing of hospitals, clinics, schools and other civilian and humanitarian targets


Disruption and destabilization of the communities of those who flee the war zones to other parts of Sudan


Widespread persecution on account of race, ethnicity and religion

Taken individually, each of these actions is a disaster for the victims. Taken together, they threaten the physical destruction of entire groups.
http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/alert/sudan/