GENOCIDE. WHAT’S THAT?
Debay __________________
I
t may be odd to start a story at the end. In 2020 Debay was a key worker during the COVID-19 pandemic, working to keep people in Britain safe and to keep vital services running. Very few of the people that Debay helped each day during the crisis would know about his background. Very few would be able to guess about the resilience, and spirit that he has shown in his life. Debay has survived the genocide in Darfur.
I hope that people all around the world will know about what happened in Darfur. Before 1999, before the genocide in Darfur began, Debay lived what he described as a ‘beautiful’, happy and peaceful life in north west Darfur. His village is called Owi. There were no Arabs in his village, and when they did visit there was no trouble. Debay, when he was young, didn’t know what tribes meant. He didn’t know what tribe he belonged to – everyone seemed to be the same to him. Debay came into the world in 1990 – the second child of his mum, who was a primary school teacher in their village, and his dad. Debay’s dad was a doctor in the village and also spent a lot of his time looking after his camels and goats – signs of prosperity and value in Darfur. He was named El Sadiq by his dad – meaning ‘trust’ in Arabic – and ‘Debay’, which means treasure, by his mum. It was in 1999 that Debay began to become aware of tension and trouble. He was seven years old. At this point people began to disappear and grown-ups were tense and troubled. Although Debay didn’t know it at the time, local men would be taken by the government to go and fight in a war in South Sudan. Although he didn’t know exactly what was happening, Debay knew enough to realise that something was wrong. That bad things could happen. Many of those bad things began to visit Debay’s school. He remembers government soldiers coming and arresting his teachers. Of the four that were arrested and taken away none of them returned. Later still the soldiers returned and killed two men from the village in front of his eyes. Debay was horrified and confused – he asked what crime they had committed, what they could possibly have stolen to bring such a punishment on them. He was told that the teachers and the men had been accused of being American spies, Zionists and of being against Islam, the Arab people and the State. The leader in charge of the army in North Darfur was Awad Ibn Ouf, a man who would be feared in the area. Often the government troops would accuse villagers of being American spies or Israeli spies or Zionists. For Debay it was ridiculous “I didn’t even know where America was”. “The first white person I saw was in 2003” It was all just an excuse to jail, to torture and to kill. It was a tactic which meant that anyone who belonged to the groups from which rebel leaders came from could be accused and arrested. Soon the government closed Debay’s school. The teachers were forced to fight in South Sudan or were put in prison…a few lucky ones were able to escape to the bush. One of those who escaped was Minni Minnawi. Debay’s friends told him that he was the leader of the movement to free Darfur from the violence of the army and the Janjaweed. He broadcast on the radio that a revolution had begun. However, it wasn’t freedom that came to the villages that Debay knew in Darfur – it was terror. Immediately before 2003 the close network of villages that typified the area of Darfur that Debay lived in began to shake with news of attacks by the Janjaweed and government troops. Relatives in other settlements began to visit and talk about the violence that was getting closer and closer. As a teenager when the genocide began the overwhelming feeling that Debay felt was fear. He told us that it was “The fear that the next day it would be our village that would be attacked. Even us kids knew that something terrible would happen and that something awful was coming. We were so scared. It was so frightening”. It wasn’t just the children that felt it, the anticipation, it was mums and dads too and even the animals seemed to shudder with fear. Debay and his friends knew that attacks had happened elsewhere and that other villages had been attacked. He knew that the Janjaweed and government soldiers with their bombs, machine guns and rifles would come to his village one day. Any day.
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