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NEWS & LETTERS, March 2004Our Life and Times by Kevin A. BarrySudan massacresIn recent weeks, fighting has heated up in the western Darfur region. Self-defined "Arab" militias armed by the central government are attacking villagers defined as "African." Even as it negotiates a peace agreement with the movement for autonomy by the peoples of the predominantly Christian and animist South, the Islamist government is continuing the same genocidal policies in Darfur that it used for decades against the South, at a cost of two million lives. In Darfur, the heavily armed militias have descended on villages, massacring men, raping women, and seizing livestock. In the past year, some 3,000 Darfur residents have been killed, 670,000 internally displaced, and 100,000 driven across the border into Chad. In contrast to the war in the South, that in Darfur has been directed by Muslims against their co-religionists from a different ethno-linguistic group, who have dared to demand a measure of self-rule. "You Blacks, we’re going to exterminate you," has been the racist battle cry of the "Arab" militias. While the people of Darfur have received some support from neighboring Chad and from international human rights groups, their plight has been ignored in the U.S.-sponsored peace negotiations between North and South. The U.S. is extremely anxious to wind up these negotiations, not the least because the multinationals are interested in exploiting Sudan’s oil. |
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