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Hawwa Yousef is still haunted by the memories of the day when armed men on horseback swept through her village in the Darfur region of Sudan in 2004, killing many villagers, including her son.
President Omar al-Bashir then unleashed the infamous Janjaweed militia in ethnic minority villages like his as part of a scorched earth campaign aimed at eliminating support for rebels who had taken up arms. 39, previous year.
Now that Bashir is behind bars in a Khartoum prison after being overthrown by the army last week, Yousef is determined to see him brought to justice.
"The regime's militia attacked while the women were collecting water for their families and their livestock," said the 70-year-old woman, who is still living in a resettlement camp.
"The villagers tried to chase the gunmen, but they killed eight villagers, including my son," she said in the sprawling camp of Kalma, near Nyala, the state capital of Darfur. -South.
"I want Bashir to face justice, he's a criminal."
Brutal campaign
Fifteen years later, hundreds of thousands of Darfuris who have lost their loved ones, their homes and their livelihoods during the brutal crackdown ordered by Bashir and his collaborators, are still living in miserable conditions. camps.
Some 300,000 people were killed when the fearsome tribal militia, which traveled great distances on horseback or camel, eliminated anyone suspected of providing support to the rebels.
Some 2.5 million people were crammed into makeshift relocation camps as the militia depopulated large areas of Darfur, a region the size of France, burning villages and crops, stealing or killing livestock.
Arab pastors recruited from the Janjawid had long been hostile to sedentary minority groups of the region's fertile lands that Bashir and his lieutenants had ruthlessly exploited.
While the leaders of the Khartoum demonstration seek to establish a civilian leadership body to replace the current transitional military council, the dominant demand in Darfur is that justice be done for Bashir and his henchmen.
"I want to see Bashir in court," said Yousef's daughter, Khadija. "If the new government wants a real peace, we want it to be brought to court.
"There was a pregnant woman who begged to be released, but they shot her – they killed her and her baby right there."
Bashir, 75, is being prosecuted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide related to his government's reaction to the rebellion in Darfur.
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