DECEMBER 29, 2008  Wall Street Journal  Editorial   http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051162714738469.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

Sudan's Slaves

Adding to the list of crimes in Darfur.

• Add slavery to the list of Khartoum's crimes in Darfur. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people have been enslaved in the region, the human-rights group Darfur Consortium says in a report based on interviews with escaped or released abductees, witnesses and families. The abductions by Sudanese soldiers and government-backed Arab tribesmen, the Janjaweed, are part of a wider strategy to drive civilians from non-Arabic speaking ethnic groups from their lands. The land is "then seized and repopulated by the militia and Arabic-speaking nomadic groups," the Uganda-based group reports.

Women and girls are raped, forced into "marriages" and sexual slavery, the report says. The testimonies are difficult to bear. "They used us like wives in the night and during the day time we worked all the time," one woman told Darfur Consortium. She was able to escape after having been abducted from a refugee camp in 2005 with 20 other people.

President Bush has led international calls to end the slaughter, urging the U.N. Security Council to act. Moscow and Beijing have snubbed his efforts and repeatedly vetoed tough sanctions against Khartoum.

President-elect Obama says diplomacy will be a keystone of his foreign policy. We'll soon see whether he will be more successful than his predecessor in rallying a reluctant international community to stop the atrocities.