What is Genocide?
Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. (source: Wikipedia)
Some facts about the crises in Darfur
1. Darfur is geographically located in the far western part of Sudan. Bordering this area is Libya to the north, Chad to the West, and Central African Republic to the Southwest. The Dar Fur has a land area of about 114,000 square miles (about the size of Texas) with varied climate ranging from desert and semi arid in the north to rich savanna lands in the South (source: http://www.dpado.org).
2. The United Nations (UN) estimates that the conflict has left as many as 450,000 dead from violence and disease (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict).
3. More than 2.5 million people have been internally displaced.
4. Who are the victims and the attackers? The victims come mostly from ethnic groups and tribes that identify themselves as non-Arab, while the attackers come mostly from ethnic groups that identify themselves as Arab. The attackers are mostly government forces and their militia, called the Janjaweed (“devil on a horse” in Arabic), though recently non-Arab rebel groups have been attacking villages in areas controlled by other rebel groups. The victims in Darfur are Muslim, as are the attackers (source: http://www.humanrightsfirst.org).
5. Press Freedom and Human Rights Defenders Journalists and human rights defenders: Continued to suffer harassment, arrest and detention without charge, and other forms of intimidation, mainly from Sudanese security forces in Darfur and Khartoum. At least 15 international and Sudanese journalists were arrested and detained in 2006, and many more faced harassment, beatings, and arbitrary bureaucratic restrictions, particularly vis-à-vis efforts to travel to and report on the situation in Darfur and other sensitive issues (source: http://www.hrw.org/).
According to the Save Darfur Coalition:
As the conflict in Darfur enters its sixth year, conditions continue to deteriorate for civilians. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, even by the most conservative estimates and millions of Darfuris have fled their homes and continue to live in camps throughout Darfur, or in refugee camps in neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic.
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