Darfur through the eyes of innocents

GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN

HOPING to gain a greater understanding of the genocide in Sudan, researchers from the organisation Human Rights Watch travelled to neighbouring Chad in February to speak to refugees who had fled across the border.

Dr Annie Sparrow and Olivier Bercault wanted to concentrate on the adults in the group, so they provided the children with crayons and paper to keep themselves amused.

When the researchers had finished their interviews, they looked at what the children had drawn. Unbidden, they had drawn what was uppermost in their minds: scenes of unmitigated horror.

There in the notebooks were pictures of the Janjaweed, the Khartoum-backed Arab militia which has terrorised the western province of Darfur, and the Sudanese government helicopters and bombers. There, too, were the burning villages, the escape to Chad and worse: the rapes, the gunshots to the genitals used by the militia to emasculate their victims and the bodies of the dead.

The researchers asked the children to explain what was going on in their pictures.

• Ala', 13


Ala' drew a scene he had witnessed in which a rebel soldier was shot in the genitals by a Janjaweed. Ali, a teacher in the refugee camp, explained that rebels were killed that way to emasculate them. "They [the Janjaweed] know what they are doing," he said.

• Taha, 13 or 14


"In the afternoon we returned from school and saw the planes. We were all looking, not imagining about bombing. Then they began the bombing. The first bomb in our garden [field], then four bombs at once in the garden. The bombs killed six people, including a young boy, a boy carried by his mother, and a girl. In another place in the garden a women was carrying her baby son – she was killed, not him. Now my nights are hard because I feel frightened. We became homeless. I cannot forget the bad images of the burning houses and fleeing at night because our village was
burned …"

• Jamil, 12


"The Janjaweed came on camels and horses, very fast. Sometimes two on one camel, with guns. Many soldiers, with
guns. This one is a machine gun. They were shooting us." He had also drawn another picture (not shown) of a man with a radio transmitter: "We needed help. There was no one to protect us," he said.

• Abd al-Rahman, 13


"I am looking at the sheep in the wadi. I see Janjaweed coming – quickly, on horses and camels, with Kalashnikovs – shooting and yelling: 'Kill the slaves, kill the blacks.' They killed many of the men with the animals. I saw people falling on the ground and bleeding. They chased after children. Some of us were taken, some we didn’t see again. All our animals were taken: camels, cows, sheep, and goats. Then the planes came and bombed the village."

• All names have been changed. Pictures courtesy Human Rights Watch.

• Read more at Darfur Drawn: The Conflict in Darfur Through Children's Eyes