KHARTOUM (AFP) — Sudanese government soldiers and militia have forced kidnapped men, women and children into labour and sexual slavery in the war-torn region of Darfur, a coalition of African charities said on Wednesday.
The Sudanese military said the allegations were not worthy of comment and a government spokesman was not reachable for further response.
The Darfur Consortium said it had uncovered evidence for the first time that men were abducted and enslaved as agricultural labourers during attacks in western Sudan, where regional conflict is poised to enter a seventh year.
Most of those abducted are women and girls, who are subjected to rape and forced marriage, even used as sex slaves and domestic workers by soldiers in Khartoum, while men and boys are forced into farm work, the study said.
"The abductions for forced labour and sexual slavery are being used by the Janjaweed, Sudanese Armed Forces and other allied militias, alongside torture, the killing of civilians, the destruction of villages and other human rights abuses as part of a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing to displace and seize the land" of non-Arabic speaking ethnic groups, the report said.
The area is then repopulated with Arabic speaking people, including nomads from Chad, Niger, Mali and Cameroon, it added.
UN officials estimate that up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have fled their homes since February 2003, when two Darfur rebel groups rose up against the government demanding resources and power.
Sudan, whose government has been heavily criticised in the West for brutally trying to suppress the uprising, and unleashing Arab proxy militias, insists the death toll stands at 10,000 and dismisses other statistics as a conspiracy.
"This statement is not worthy of comment," Sawarmi Khaled, a spokesman for the Sudanese army, told AFP when questioned about the report's allegations.
Wednesday's study comes as judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) could rule as early as January on whether to indict Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir on 10 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The report said it was "likely that thousands" of people from tribes that Beshir stands accused by the ICC prosecutor of ordering his forces to annihilate, and other groups, have been kidnapped and forced into labour.
Based on interviews relating to 100 cases, the report said members of the Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa tribes and other non-Arabic speaking groups were snatched during attacks on villages by the military and so-called Janjaweed militias.
"They used us like their wives in the night and during the day time we worked all the time, preparing food, collecting firewood and fetching water," the report quoted an anonymous woman it said was kidnapped from an IDP camp.
"They beat me regularly and they ordered me to look after their animals, they were treating me and the other boys very badly, they kept telling us that we are not human beings," it quoted one boy allegedly forced to work for the Janjaweed.
"Urgent action is clearly required to prevent further abductions and associated human rights violations and to release and assist those who are still being held," said Dismas Nkunda, co-chair of the Darfur Consortium.
The report called on an undermanned UN-led peacekeeping mission to deploy fully and extend its mandate to allow it to use force to protect civilians in a bid to help to reduce attacks on civilian targets and abductions.
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