Semantics of mass killing

The attackers, as they have done so often, rampaged through terrified people, shouting "Kill the slaves ... we have orders to kill all the blacks". Eight more villages in Darfur were torched in a single day by armed men in a concerted operation.

No one knows how many were killed, but it is the latest evidence that inaction by the international community has emboldened the Janjaweed Arab militias and their backers in the Islamist Government in Khartoum.

As arguments rage over who was to blame for the attacks, the UN is deciding whether the atrocities of the past two years amount to genocide. Human rights organisations are using the occasion of Holocaust Day , to call for international war trials to help to stop the crimes being committed against the civilians of Darfur.

More than 70,000 people have been killed. More than 1.6 million have been forced from their homes in a conflict that has been described as "the world's worst humanitarian crisis". The violence has been so intense that aid agencies have been forced to suspend their work after coming under attack.

While the diplomats debate how to respond, the survivors of the atrocities are left traumatised, many in refugee camps. More than 60 per cent of refugees from Darfur have witnessed the killing of a family member by the men on horseback.

Four out of every five people have seen the destruction of their village. Two-thirds saw Government planes laden with bombs target fleeing civilians. And one-third heard racial abuse while they and their relatives were being murdered or raped.

After the Rwandan genocide in 1994, just as after the Holocaust, when six million Jews were exterminated by the Nazis, the world said "Never again." Now, there is Darfur.

Efforts to bring Sudan before the International Criminal Court have been undermined by the Bush Administration's hostility to the court, which was specifically set up to judge those suspected of genocide and crimes against humanity.

The United States has, at least, publicly branded these atrocities as genocide. The British Government has refused to do so, preferring to wait for the conclusions of an international commission of inquiry, which reported to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan this week.

The four-man panel, led by Italian jurist Antonio Cassese, was asked to investigate the Darfur killings, determine whether genocide has occurred, and to identify perpetrators with a view to holding them accountable.

Annan is expected to submit the report to the Security Council on Monday, where debate will be engaged between supporters of the International Criminal Court, and its main detractor, the US, which went so far as to unsign the treaty setting up the tribunal.

The slaughter, ethnic cleansing and burning of villages began two years ago. In July last year the Bush Administration called it genocide, a term with legal connotations under the genocide convention which make it imperative to act.

The report now on Annan's desk may fudge the issue of genocide, which according to the textbooks is "the intentional destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such". But human rights advocates maintain that genocide or not, the Security Council must rule that crimes against humanity were and are being committed, and must be referred to the International Court for prosecution.

US pressure for a ill-defined ad hoc tribunal for Sudan is opposed by human rights organisations, who say the International Criminal Court is the only place for the Sudanese suspects to be tried. Even the outgoing US ambassador to the United Nations, John Danforth, who was instrumental in pressing for UN sanctions against Khartoum, had pressed for a referral to the International Criminal Court before being overruled by the hawks in Washington.

"I do not know whether the international commission will determine there was genocide, which requires the evidence to be weighed very carefully," said Juan Mendez, adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the prevention of genocide. "But I am persuaded there were war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur, with a clear ethnic dimension.

"I will respect the view of the commission, but in my view these crimes merit international punishment, and the best scenario for that is the International Criminal Court."

For the British genocide-prevention group, Aegis Trust, there is no argument. "Was the killing intentional? Yes," it said in a report. "Was it systematically organised by the al-Bashir regime using Govern- ment-armed Janjaweed militias, bombers and helicopter gunships? Yes. Were the victims chosen because of their ethnic and racial identity? Yes.

"This, in short, is genocide. The genocide continues."

At present in Darfur, 790 African Union soldiers are ensuring the protection of "ceasefire monitors" in an area the size of France, where they have no mandate to protect civilians as the war goes on.

The Security Council, despite threatening sanctions four months ago against the Sudanese Government, has done nothing, preferring to allow the African Union to take the lead in a hopelessly under-equipped mission.

The council remains bitterly divided, with veto-wielding powers Russia and China opposed to punitive action.

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