No question
After visit to refugees, doctors' group asserts Sudan is practicing genocide
Says world response needed now in Darfur
By Carolyn Y. Johnson, Globe Correspondent | June 24, 2004
The violence in the Darfur region of Sudan includes systematic killings, rape, pillaging, and destruction of villages that ''are clear indicators of genocide," according to a report issued yesterday by Physicians for Human Rights.
A delegation from the Boston-based advocacy group visited the neighboring country of Chad last month and interviewed non-Arab refugees from the Darfur region, who gave firsthand accounts of being assaulted and chased while their wells were poisoned, livestock stolen, and villages burned by an Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, working with the Sudanese government.
''What we determined, based on a number of testimonies, is that there are clear indicators of genocide," investigator John Heffernan said. ''The main point here is a consistent program of targeting non-Arabs."
Under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which the United States has signed, any member country is obligated to stop or prevent genocide if it is identified. The international genocide convention, adopted in 1948, defines genocide as actions intended to destroy a racial, national, religious, or ethnic group.
