Mild rebukes for Darfur's killers

摘要

In Um seifa, a dusty village in Sudan's western region of Darfur, a crowd of white-robed children stood outside their newly reopened school (see picture above). "The government never gave us education, development, health [services or] equality," said the headmaster, Muhammad Harun Musa. So the people of Um Seifa built their own school. A week after your correspondent visited it, it was burned to the ground, and eight children murdered. That was in December. According to villagers who returned at night to bury the dead, some 32 people were killed in a three-day attack by government-sponsored militiamen, known locally as janja-weed (bandits). Such stories are almost too common to raise eyebrows in Darfur. For a year-and-a-half now, Sudan's Arab-dominated government has been ethnically cleansing this vast western region, by arming, encouraging and giving air support to mostly Arab militias who kill, rape and rob black Africans.