Darfur Translators on Strike

Though mandated to remain in Darfur until June 2007, according to The Associated Press and BBC News, 150 African Union mission interpreters in Darfur have gone on strike over unpaid wages. They are claiming to have gone without pay for three months, however an AU official claims that they had been paid in January.

The Sudan News Agency (SUNA) said that the Darfur interpreters, who translate between AU troops and non-Arabic speaking refugees, complained of not having been paid for the months of Decmeber, January and February.

AU spokesman, Nurredin Mezzni, told The Associated Press, "We do really appreciate the work being rendered by those translators, but they should take into account the financial problems the Union faces. It is not only the translators but other staffers who have similar problems."

According to Mezzni, the African Union was working with partners in the European Union and the international community to secure the rest of the payments.

Information from BBC News states that the interpreters also requested a danger allowance and improved pay conditions through a letter to Darfur's Labor Affairs Department. However, the Sudanese Labor Union said the translators salaries were the best provided to local staff.

The United Nations has accused Sudan's government and the pro-government Arab militias, known as the janjaweed, of war crimes against the region's black African population. The UN also wants to send a 22,000-member joint UN-AU peacekeeping mission to Darfur, but Omar al-Bashir, Sudan's president, has rejected this plan, claiming the peacekeepers would compromise Sudan's sovereignty and try to re-colonize the country.

Though Bashir contends that he is wary of UN motives, the SaveDarfur.org Newsroom reported that a U.N. human rights mission on Monday, led by Nobel peace prize laureate Jody Williams, accused Sudan's government of orchestrating and taking part in war crimes in Darfur and called for urgent international action to protect civilians there. The mission, was dispatched by the U.N. Human Rights Council to look into charges of widespread abuse in Sudan's Darfur region, where observers say some 200,000 people have been killed since 2003. The 35-page report stated, "The situation is characterized by gross and systematic violations of human rights and grave breaches of international humanitarian law."

The report urged the U.N. Security Council to take urgent action to protect the people in Darfur, including through the deployment of peacekeepers. This decision to send the six-person team to Sudan was made after a bitter debate. Some Arab and African countries on the 47-state body were unhappy at singling out Sudan for special attention.

The report said while rebel groups were also guilty of serious abuses, the "principal pattern is one of a violent counterinsurgency campaign" being waged by government forces and their militia allies, the Janjaweed.