UN: Sudan Violence Could Involve War Crimes

The New York Times reports:

An unpublished report from the United Nations peacekeeping force in southern Sudan gives details of violence that has erupted in an important border state, including widespread aerial bombardments that kill civilians, executions, possible mass graves and attacks on churches.

The report emerged as the newly minted Republic of South Sudan, which officially seceded from the northern part of the country on July 9, was admitted to the United Nations on Thursday. Its designated ambassador, Ezekiel Gatkuoth, broke out a few jubilant dance moves as the new country’s striped flag, with its distinctive yellow star, rose alongside those of the other 192 member states.

In speeches, representatives from both Sudan and South Sudan pledged to work peacefully to untangle the remaining complex issues, including demarcating the border between them, sharing oil and determining citizenship.

“We and our brothers in South Sudan have left bitterness and the wounds of war behind us, and we’re looking forward to the future,” Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman, the Sudanese envoy to the United Nations, told the General Assembly.

Yet the United Nations report suggests that in its effort to stamp out any lingering rebellion in South Kordofan State, which borders South Sudan but remains entirely in the territory of Sudan, the northern government based in Khartoum has carried out widespread human rights violations that could amount to war crimes.

Much of the violence is focused on the Nuba people, a mostly Christian minority that fought alongside the south during many of the decades of its 50-year independence struggle.