"In the immediate wake of the UN's whitewashing of UNAMID's past failures to report, and prevent, atrocity crimes in Darfur (see below), the Mission has now deliberately and consequentially lied about an investigation of the rape of some 200 girls and women in the Tabit area of North Darfur. Tabit is some 30 miles southwest of el-Fasher, capital of North Darfur and the location of UNAMID headquarters. From el-Fasher UNAMID, were it willing, is capable of projecting all necessary military protection needed for the investigation of serious crimes committed at such a short distance. UNAMID has declared to various news agencies, including Reuters and Agence-France Presse, that their team sent to investigate this ghastly episode in unconstrained sexual violence was prevented from entering Tabit by Khartoum's security forces. This not only bespeaks a crippled mission but is also deeply false.
Darfuri eyewitnesses from Tabit have reported to multiple sources, including this writer, that UNAMID did in fact enter Tabit, specifically on Tuesday at 5:00am. Once in Tabit, UNAMID investigators spoke for at least ten minutes with four villagers at the transportation center in the town. There the UNAMID investigators received full confirmation of the sexual violence that raged from Friday, October 31 to Sunday afternoon, November 2. It is a deeply disturbing and all too revealing fact that instead of admitting what investigators had discovered speaking with eyewitnesses, UNAMID claimed the team had been stopped at the checkpoint outside Tabit. As the conversation between UNAMID investigators and the four villagers continued, four cars containing Military Intelligence personnel roared onto the scene; those present quickly walked away. They report that having walked some distance, they watched as Military Intelligence-which has long had the primary security role in Darfur-spoke with UNAMID investigators for half an hour. The UNAMID investigators then returned back to El Fasher.
But this is what has been reported, on the basis of UNAMID statements, by news agencies (here the UN News Center, 5 November 2014):
The African Union-United Nations hybrid mission in Darfur (UNAMID) has expressed its "deep concern" about allegations circulating in local media over the mass rape of 200 women and girls in a town in the region's North, declaring that it is conducting a thorough investigation into the veracity of the claims.
In a press statement today, the Mission cited reports of the alleged mass rape in the town of Tabit, located 45 kilometres southwest of El Fasher, in North Darfur. A UNAMID verification patrol was immediately dispatched to conduct an investigation but upon reaching the outskirts of the town was denied access by Sudanese military at a checkpoint. "The Mission leadership is calling on authorities of the Government of Sudan to grant UNAMID's unhindered access to all Darfur, especially to areas where alleged incidents affecting civilians have been reported," the statement read, adding that UNAMID remained "determined to obtain crucial information and leads."
But all these claims are belied by the fact that UNAMID investigators, even in the course of a ten-minute conversation with Tabit villagers, were able to confirm the basic facts about the horrific events: that some 200 girls and women were in fact raped (and here Military Intelligence did nothing to intervene) from October 31 to November 2 in the Tabit area. UNAMID was not "denied access by Sudanese military at a checkpoint": they allowed themselves to be expelled from the scene of what they themselves had already confirmed was a massive atrocity crime. There is no reconciling these two accounts of the investigative failure of the UNAMID mission; clearly the fabrication of how events unfolded was meant to spare, yet again, UNAMID leadership from the task of reporting such crimes and thereby angering Khartoum."