You Are Slaves

ge just a few kilometers north of her own. “One woman was killed. I was raped.”
Officially, the cease-fire in the Darfur region went into effect May 8.
That was three days after the government and the largest rebel group signed a broad peace agreement, creating hope for an end to the brutal assaults that have left more than 200,000 dead and have driven two million from their homes – a campaign of government- sponsored terror against non-Arab tribes in Darfur that the Bush administration has called genocide.
The reality was on grim display in this crossroads town, near where Moussa and other villagers were attacked Thursday as they rode home in a truck from Shangil Tobayi.
The Arab militiamen who attacked them killed one woman, wounded six villagers and raped 15 women, according to witnesses and victims.
The attack played out like so many others in this vast, lawless region. Three men with machine guns stopped the truck on the road and fired into its cabin, hitting the driver and blowing out the tires.
They ordered the people on the truck, about 50 men, women and children, to take the goods they were transporting – sacks of millet, two cows and five goats – to where their camels and the rest of their men were waiting in a dry riverbed a kilometer or two off the road. Once that was completed, the raiders set upon the women, raping them in turn, witnesses said.
“They told us,” said Hussein Ahmed Abdulla, who stood by helpless as the women were raped, “‘You are slaves, we will finish you. We will not allow you to move from Menawashei, not one kilometer.’”