On August 5, 2014 the displaced persons of El Salam camp in South Darfur were brutally assaulted by military and security forces of the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime in Khartoum. Tens of thousands of civilians, mainly women and children, were terrorized during this ferocious operation; a great many were beaten, humiliated, and robbed. Dozens were arrested, only to be released when no evidence could be adduced to justify the arrests. Lack of evidence, however, is not always sufficient to guarantee release, and a number of those arrested remain in custody and subject to torture.
The force that assaulted El Salam camp was large in number-they came in a reported 140 vehicles-and heavily armed. Photographs that have come to me from a confidential source at the location bear out what had been earlier reported by Radio Dabanga, virtually our only news source about violence in Darfur, once the a cause célèbre among American and European civil society. If not for the Radio Dabanga dispatch, El Salam would have been another in a long list of unreported assaults on unarmed civilians in camps for displaced persons-displaced by the very militia and military elements that are now attacking them.
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