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Sudan: Drawn in Darfur - Pictures Don't Lie
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Business Daily (Nairobi)
OPINION
21 August 2007
Posted to the web 21 August 2007
Rebekah Heil And Katy Glassborow
Anna Schmitt was in eastern Chad interviewing Sudanese refugees from the Darfur region when the women at a displacement camp gave her some advice.
"If you want information, you should ask the children." So she did just that. During her research for the non-government organisation Waging Peace, Schmitt sat in a classroom with the camp's children, many of whom had been forced from their homes three or four years ago.
Through interpreters who spoke Arabic and the languages of Darfur, she asked the children about their hopes and dreams. Many answered that they wanted to be doctors or teachers or join the civil service.
One 16-year-old boy said, "I don't want to become a rebel. I want to be educated and continue school, so I can help my people." When he was 14, his father had been killed in front of him in Darfur.
Schmitt asked the children to write down their memories when one of them asked, 'Would we be allowed to draw instead?' The children, between the ages of five and 18, drew pictures showing their villages full of tanks and armed men on horseback, houses ablaze and helicopters circling the skies.
As Waging Peace gathered in the drawings, the translators got the children to tell them what was in their pictures, and wrote these explanations down on the back of each one.
In the pictures, the helicopters bear the markings of military aircraft, and men in camouflage are labelled by the children as Janjaweed militia. Villagers are shown under attack, women are led off in chains, and civilians are shot at and try to defend themselves with spears and arrows.
These visual accounts contradict Khartoum's insistence that most of the casualties involve combatants from Darfur's rebel movements. Waging Peace director Louise Roland-Gosselin says the pictures suggest that the Sudanese government is directly involved in the violence, working alongside the Janjaweed.
"Civilians are being targeted, not rebels. Women and children are being shot at, not rebels. It's not a civil war, and not rebels against government troops," she said.
Roland-Gosselin pointed out that the military are shown as having a lighter skin colour than those being attacked, and explained that the children are identifying themselves as black Africans and the attackers as Arabs.
Khartoum has long denied claims that it is supporting the militia. But this claim was recently contested by the International Criminal Court, ICC, which was tasked by the United Nations Security Council to look into events in Darfur.
Prosecutors began investigations in 2005, and announced this February that they believe Ahmad Harun, currently Sudan's minister for humanitarian affairs, and Janjaweed militia leader Ali Kushayb, are responsible for coordinated violence against innocent civilians in Darfur.
ICC Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said the men are suspected of committing crimes against humanity and war crimes during attacks on the villages of Kodoom, Bindisi, Mukjar and Arwala in western Darfur between 2003 and 2004.
These include rape, murder, torture, destruction of property and forcible transfer.
In April, ICC judges issued arrest warrants against the two men. Waging Peace plans to submit the 500 drawings to the ICC as evidence of attacks carried out by Sudanese government forces.
"We think that these pictures are evidence of genocide and show what has been happening for the past four years, and that they constitute evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity," said Roland-Gosselin.
She believes the fact that the drawings were produced by children make them even more valuable as evidence. "Children basically speak the truth, and the truth coming out of them is much more credible than what's coming from the Sudanese government," she said.
IWPR approached ICC prosecutors to ask whether such pictures might be admissible as evidence in a criminal investigation and subsequent trial, but they refused to comment.
Chief Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo has consistently encouraged NGOs working in relevant countries to share evidence with his team of investigators. In September 2006, he called on NGOs to help raise awareness about the court across Africa, support witnesses and victims, and collect evidence from the field.
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"I want to increase your participation so that you help me to get gender-based evidence, as we cannot present a case without evidence," he told NGOs at a conference. "To enlarge victim participation, we encourage your help."
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