Ethnic cleansing

last updated 8 January 2015

Darfur, Sudan

Militias backed by the Arab government of Sudan have continued attacking blacks in Darfur province, despite the signing last week of a cease-fire, the U.S. State Department said this week. The fighting, which broke out in the province a year ago, has displaced up to 1 million people and caused widespread famine. Villages have been bombed and their inhabitants raped, and tens of thousands of blacks have been forced into government-run concentration camps. The brutality appears to be a continuation of a previous civil war between the Arabs of the north and the Christian and animist blacks of the south. During that conflict, which ended in 2002, thousands of Christian and animist blacks were enslaved. The blacks in Darfur are Muslims.