U.S. and European media

March 12, 2023

Reuters: 5 Aid Workers Kidnapped in Darfur. Three international aid workers have been kidnapped in Darfur, officials said on Thursday, further complicating humanitarian operations in Sudan's west. The three workers from the Belgian arm of Medecins Sans Frontieres were seized as tension escalated in Sudan following the decision by the International Criminal Court this month to issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir over accusations of war crimes in Darfur. "We can confirm that a group of armed men went to the location and ordered five persons to follow them. They were three international staff and two national staff," said Kemal Saiki, communications director for UNAMID peacekeepers in Darfur. UNAMID said the kidnapping took place late on Wednesday.

Associated Press: Sudan: 2 people die from meningitis in Darfur camp. A doctor and a camp resident say at least two people died from a meningitis outbreak in a southern Darfur refugee camp. The deaths in Kalma camp come after Sudan expelled 13 aid groups in response to an international court's indictment of Sudan's president for war crimes in Darfur. The camp resident says camp medics reported the two deaths Tuesday. The doctor, who works in a nearby town, says colleagues in the camp told him at least two died. Both spoke on condition of anonymity Wednesday for fear of government retribution. Doctors Without Borders was to start vaccinations for 130,000 people in the area before being expelled March 5. The group said March 6 that four had died from meningitis and 28 others had been infected in the camp.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Coalition president discusses crisis in Darfur. The dire situation of 2.7 million refugees in Sudan's Darfur region has reached a new crisis after the nation's president expelled 13 agencies that advocates say supplied half the aid that keeps refugees alive. That is the message that Jerry Fowler, president of the Save Darfur Coalition, brought to Pittsburgh on a three-day visit. Mr. Fowler believes the Sudanese government banished major aid groups "because they are desperate. They believe if they raise the ante [of danger to the refugees], there will be a back-off on the indictment," he said. Still, he believes the indictment presents an opportunity. "The Sudanese government has been successful to a disturbing degree at portraying themselves as victims of neo-colonialism ... which resonates with other governments in Africa and the Arab world," he said. But the International Criminal Court is global, with members from 30 African nations, but not from the U.S., Mr. Fowler said. The judges who issued the charges were from Brazil, Ghana and Latvia, which should undermine the rhetoric about colonial persecution, he said.

The Jewish Chronicle (PA): Tales of two nightmares. Hundreds of public and private school students listened intently Tuesday as Sam Weinreb, a Holocaust survivor, retold his shocking story of survival. Then, they listened with equal intent as Jerry Fowler, president of the National Save Darfur Coalition, described how hundreds of thousands people struggle to stay alive today in refugee camps on the edge of the Sahara Desert, displaced from their homes in Darfur, a region of Sudan. Fowler, who was in town this week to help open the "Destroyed Villages" photo exhibit at Duquesne University, called on the students to join a campaign to send 1 million postcards to President Barack Obama urging him to keep his promise to end the genocide in Darfur. During his campaign last year, Obama pledged to work with "unstinting resolve" to end the crisis.

The Darfur Daily News is a service of the Save Darfur Coalition. To subscribe to the Daily News, please email [email protected]. For media inquiries, please contact Ashley Roberts at (202) 478-6181, or [email protected].