U.S. Aide Assails Sudan’s ‘Dumping’ of Squatters

WASHINGTON —  The Sudanese government has evicted about 400,000 squatters from their homes in Khartoum over the last three months, depositing them in a harsh desert area with no access to food, water or shelter, a U.S. official said Friday.

The Sudanese action “amounts to a death sentence,” said Andrew Natsios, head of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance.

The targets of the campaign are families who live on plots of land that are being reclaimed by their rightful owners.

“We’re not here to argue the legalities,” Natsios told a news conference. “We’re simply here to argue that if you’re going to move people, you ought to have adequate living conditions where you move them. You don’t just dump them into the desert.”

Many victims of the campaign are Christians and animists from southern Sudan who have fled north to the capital to escape civil strife. Islamic volunteer groups have offered to assist the displaced Sudanese but only on condition that they convert to Islam, Natsios said.

An Agency for International Development press release said the relocations have been carried out at gunpoint. Demolition teams bulldoze the makeshift homes where the victims lived, it said.

In one incident two months ago, government forces opened fire on a group resisting relocation, killing 12 people, it added.