Charred village sends message of terror to displaced Darfurians

[seriousstan]

SERAF, Sudan, April 26 (UNHCR) – The acrid smell of fresh embers hung in the air and clouds of flies swarmed through the sweltering afternoon air as Ibrahim Adam poked silently through the remains of what had been his grain storage hut. Finally he held aloft a 30-cm steel stake formerly used for tethering his donkey – the blackened piece of metal is all that remains of the life he once led in this Darfur village.

Ibrahim, once a prosperous tailor, led a UNHCR team last week to the freshly torched village of Seraf, an already abandoned village he said was burned to the ground four days earlier by men he calls Arabs or Janjaweed militias.

"They are telling us not to come back to our original village," he said in a voice devoid of emotion. "They want to push us to go to Chad, out of the country. They want to stay here instead of us."

"It's very symbolic," agreed a UNHCR staff member who went to Seraf with Ibrahim. "It's not pragmatic because the village was already empty of people. The message is: 'Don't think life is going to go back to normal.' It is a dramatic way of making the point they (the original inhabitants) are not welcome here."

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