Human Rights Watch today called for an independent investigation into recent helicopter killings of civilians in southern Sudan.
On February 20, 2002, a Sudanese government helicopter attack killed seventeen civilians and injured many more at a U.N. relief food distribution location in the oilfield area of Bieh, Western Upper Nile, southern Sudan. The area had been approved by Sudan's government for relief distribution. U.N. food monitors and civilians witnessed the attack and other U.N. officials counted the dead.
“This is the latest and most deadly helicopter attack on civilians in Sudan’s eighteen-year civil war,” said Jemera Rone, Sudan researcher at Human Rights Watch. “It appears to have deliberately targeted civilians and humanitarian workers.”
The attack by two helicopters was not a mistake. According to the U.N., the helicopters hovered above the U.N. compound and fired at least five rockets at the civilians waiting for a food distribution, beside tons of food in fifty-kilo bags of grain clearly visible in the middle of the afternoon. No rebel forces were in the area at the time.
Because of this major human rights violation, on February 21, the U.S. government suspended its participation in peace efforts until the Sudanese government accounts for the incident.
“The Sudan government must have a firm response to its forces’ killing of seventeen and wounding of scores more,” said Rone. “The government’s offer, to appoint its own military to investigate, is simply not adequate.”
Human Rights Watch called on the Sudanese government to endorse the U.S. proposal for an international team to monitor allegations of violations of the Geneva Conventions. It urged the Sudan government to invite such a team to investigate the Bieh bombing.
Once the facts have been established by independent international monitors, the government should take strong steps to bring to justice those responsible, all the way up the chain of command, to prevent such abuses being repeated, Rone said.
The Sudan government had been negotiating with the U.S. with high hopes of regularizing relations. As part of these negotiations, Sen. John Danforth, the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan for Peace, proposed that both government and rebel forces meet four tests before the U.S. would proceed any further as mediator in the conflict. The international Geneva Conventions monitoring team was to be part of the government and rebel commitment to stop attacks on civilians, the fourth and most difficult of the tests Danforth proposed.
State department officials say that Danforth emphasized to the Sudan government that it must meet all four tests. The recent attack in Western Upper Nile, however, led the U.S. government to suspend work on the Danforth initiative.
