Rampant sex crimes occurring in Darfur claims RIC professor

Rampant sex crimes occurring in Darfur claims RIC professor

by KAREN LEE ZINER
Providence Journal
February 23, 2006

PROVIDENCE -- Rape and other sexual or gender-based violence against women and children flourishes "in a culture of impunity" that exists in the Darfur region of Sudan, Dr. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, a Rhode Island College anthropology professor and Sudan scholar said yesterday.

Fluehr-Lobban joined other speakers at a daylong forum that examined the genocidal crisis in Darfur, an eastern region of Sudan where government-backed militias known as the Janjaweed have been killing civilians since 2003. The number of dead ranges from 60,000 to more than 400,000; more than 2 million people have been displaced in that humanitarian crisis.

Fluehr-Lobban said that the reports of rape are emerging as women are interviewed at the increasing number of Internally Displaced Persons camps in the region. Those reports are being considered by the International Criminal Court as part of a potential war-crimes case.

That "is historic" and remarkable, she said, "because this is a culture that has not acknowledged rape as a crime against women . . . I cannot emphasize how shameful it is considered," and the dire consequences women face for reporting such crimes.

Meanwhile, Fluehr-Lobban said the Sudanese government has denied the reports of rape and gang rape, "and says they are efforts by NGOs [non-governmental relief organizations] to make the country look bad. There is the idea that the United States hates Islam and hates Sudan," and the rape reports are part of "a war of propaganda" against Sudan.

Fluehr-Lobban advocated implementing the yet-to-be-effected Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed last year at the end of a 22-year civil war in Sudan, and bringing Sudanese women's, peace and human-rights activists in Sudan and the diaspora to the table at future peace efforts.

The RIC forum is one of several campusevents concerning the Darfur crisis this week.

Tonight from 8 to 10 p.m., the Darfur Action Network and Americans for Informed Democracy at Brown University are holding a Town Hall meeting at Salomon Hall that aims to create a statewide "Darfur Action Coalition."

Speakers include Jerry Fowler, staff director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Committee on Conscience and Omer Bartov, professor of European History at Brown and considered a world authority on the subject of genocide.

More than 100 people attended yesterday's forum at RIC, where speakers examined the ethno-historical roots of the conflict; the economics of the region and the impact of 40 years of civil war in Sudan that ended last year in a yet-to-be effected peace accord.

Fluehr-Lobban and her husband, Richard Lobban -- a fellow RIC anthropology professor who spoke yesterday of the ethno-historical roots of the Darfur conflict -- are cofounders of the Sudan Studies Association, one of the forum sponsors. The couple have been conducting research in that African country for 30 years; Fluehr-Lobban last year spent a four-month sabbatical in Khartoum, the capital.

Other sponsors included the College Committee on Speakers and Lectures; the School of Arts and Sciences; the African and Afro-American Studies Program, the African Alliance of Rhode Island, the college's Amnesty International chapter, and the RIC Unity Center.

kziner@projo.com/(401)-277-7375.