KHARTOUM (Agencies)
Sudan has denied committing human rights violations against displaced people in Darfur, where 33 civilians were killed by security forces in August according to a United Nations investigation.
"We deny the facts," foreign ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadiq said late on Friday, after a joint probe by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights and the U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur said that Sudanese "government security forces committed violations of international human rights law against the civilian population of Kalma IDP camp," on August 25.
U.N. investigators said police and security forces searching for weapons in Darfur's biggest camp for internally displaced people (IDP) were confronted by a group of camp residents who sought to stop them entering.
"The security forces fired shots in the air, before opening fire on the crowd," killing 33 people, including 10 women and nine children, and wounding another 108 of the camp's residents, the United Nations said in a statement.
"The security forces used lethal force in an unnecessary, disproportionate and therefore unlawful manner," the report said.
Sadiq said Sudanese forces entered the camp to seize weapons being stockpiled there and shared the information with the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur.
"When the information became very solid, we took the decision to get rid of the weapons," he said.
Sudan considers Kalma, an impoverished and volatile camp in South Darfur, as a source of support for the ethnic minority rebels it has been fighting for the past six years. The camp is home to about 80,000 people made homeless by the conflict.
The U.N. says that up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million been displaced since the uprising against Sudan's Arab-dominated government started in Feb. 2003. Khartoum says 10,000 died.
The report comes as International Criminal Court judges are examining evidence to decide whether to issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges of genocide in Darfur. |
