KEY POINTS:
Dramatic new evidence of the attacks on the people of Darfur by Sudanese Government troops has emerged in 500 drawings by children who escaped the violence by fleeing across the border to Chad.
In a ground-breaking move, the remarkable collection of images will now be submitted to the International Criminal Court, which has started proceedings against a Sudanese Government minister and a militia commander accused of committing war crimes in Darfur.
The testimony of the children, some as young as 8, emerged by chance when a peace campaigner handed the youngsters paper, pencils and crayons to keep them occupied while she interviewed their mothers.
Anna Schmidt, a researcher for Waging Peace, which campaigns against genocide, had been hoping to gain information about the atrocities in Darfur from the women, who are among 250,000 who have fled to the relative safety of neighbouring Chad.
Yet it was their children who provided perhaps the most significant indication yet of exactly what has gone on in Darfur. Most of them could not read or write. But they could draw. And, unprompted, they started to reveal what they had seen.
The drawings depict Sudanese tanks, planes and helicopters launching co-ordinated attacks with the Arab Janjaweed militia against Darfuris defending themselves with bows and arrows.
The Government of Sudan has repeatedly denied launching military attacks in Darfur.
The graphic images include the bombing of civilians and children, homes being set on fire as villages are destroyed, beheadings, victims lying in pools of blood, women chained together being led away and mass graves.
Many of the children who drew the stories of their young lives do not have fathers or brothers. Men and older boys have been slaughtered in Darfur.
Childish lines that look as though they should be depicting fairgrounds or farmyards instead show helicopter gun attacks, tanks bearing the Sudanese flag, soldiers wearing the uniform of the Sudanese Army alongside vehicles with machine guns driven by Janjaweed.
The perpetrators are always light-skinned. The victims are always black.
"If this is not evidence, I don't know what is," said Rebecca Tinsley, a director of Waging Peace, who will submit the drawings to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and plans to exhibit them to rally support for tougher international action against Sudan.
"The children have provided a photographic record. They have not been manipulated. The pattern that emerged in the drawings is amazing. It corroborates what we know is happening and disproves what we are being told by the Government of Sudan."
The ICC, based in The Hague, has named two suspects wanted for alleged war crimes in Darfur. They are Ahmed Muhammed Harun, formerly Sudan's junior interior minister responsible for Darfur and now Humanitarian Affairs Minister, and Ali Mohammed Ali Abd-al-Rahman, a leader of one of the Janjaweed militias.
But there is no guarantee they will be handed over by Sudan.
About 110 people are dying in Darfur every day, according to Waging Peace. And more than 200,000 have been killed since the crisis began four years ago, 2 million have been displaced and 4 million rely on food aid.
On Wednesday, the United Nations backed a British and French resolution that will allow a 26,000-strong UN-African Union peacekeeping force to go to Darfur.
Tinsley expressed concern at statements by the Sudanese Government yesterday that the force would come from African nations. She said the African Union was already overstretched and 13,000 short of the number of troops it needed in Somalia. The statements as "predictable delaying tactics" by Khartoum.
She feared the force might not be in place until February, even though the UN wants to start deploying it in October.
Tinsley is campaigning for tougher sanctions, such as a travel ban, on leading figures in the Sudanese Government.
When she visited Darfur, she gathered evidence of the systematic rape of black women when they left refugee camps to gather firewood. She said rape was being used as a weapon of war, with victims being told: "I want to dilute your blood."
Many women caught HIV and could not get drugs to treat the virus.
When Tinsley interviewed women in Darfur, several told her: "You have to be our voice. We don't have a voice."
Now, the women's children have found theirs.
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The conflict and trying to keep the peace
* Rebels in Sudan's western Darfur region took up arms against the Government in February 2003, saying Khartoum discriminated against non-Arab farmers there.
* Khartoum mobilised proxy Arab militia to help quell the revolt. Some militiamen, known locally as Janjaweed, pillaged and burned villages and killed civilians. The Government has called the Janjaweed outlaws and denied supporting them.
* Experts have estimated that at least 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million driven from their homes in the region since early 2003, some crossing the border into Chad.
Ceasefires
* A ceasefire was agreed in Darfur in April 2004. The African Union sent 7000 peacekeepers with a mandate to monitor the peace and protect those displaced in the camps. The ceasefire has been violated regularly, with fighting blamed on Government troops, rebels and Janjaweed militias.
* A peace deal last May was signed by only one of three rebel negotiating factions. It was almost immediately rejected by many in Darfur who said it did not go far enough. A new rebel coalition has since formed and renewed hostilities with the Government.
Peacekeeping force
* Last August, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution for deployment of a "hybrid" UN-African Union force of 22,500 in Darfur to replace and absorb the present AU force.
* Sudan had already agreed to allow an operation involving technical UN support personnel to deploy to Darfur.
* The new operation, called the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur, will absorb the 7000 AU troops in Darfur. It is expected to cost more than US$2 billion ($2.6 billion) in the first year.
- REUTERS
