Chad remains at Stage 6, the Preparation stage preceding genocide

by Genocide Watch
9 February 2012

Since its independence from France in 1965, Chad’s history has been marked by tensions between the Arab-Muslim North and the Christian and traditional South.

In 1962, Hissène Habré seized power. During his rule, thousands of political killings and widespread torture took place. The killings included genocidal massacres against various ethnic groups such as the Sara, Hadjerai and the Zaghawa. In 1990 Habré was overthrown by Idriss Deby.  Habré fled to Senegal.

In September 2005, a Belgian judge issued an international arrest warrant charging Habré with crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture committed during his rule and requested his extradition to Belgium under the Belgian law asserting “universal jurisdiction” over crimes against humanity. The request was rejected by Senegal. Despite renewed requests from Belgium, Senegal has refused Habré’s extradition. [Extensive information about the Habré case can be found on the website of Human Rights Watch.  Reed Brody, who has worked on the case for many years, continues his extraordinary quest to bring Habré to justice for his crimes.]

In 1996, Deby was confirmed as president after the country’s first election. In 1998, his former defense minister Youssof Togoimi led an armed rebellion in the North, and Libya tried to annex a large northern strip of Chad.  Chadian troops, assisted by France, drove Libya back.  Despite a Libyan peace deal in 2002, genuine peace did not come until Gaddafi was overthrown in Libya in 2011.

In 2003 the situation worsened when the genocide in neighboring Sudan’s Darfur region resulted in hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees fleeing across the border into Chad.  Sudanese government backed Janjaweed militias extended their raids into Chad. Just as they did in Darfur, the militias raided dozens of black African Chadian villages, murdering, pillaging and displacing civilians.

The Sudanese government has supported rebels who have made three attempts to overthrow the Chadian government by force. These situations made Genocide Watch declare Genocide Warnings for Chad in 2005, renewed in April 2006 and January 2008.  Chad remains at Stage 6, the Preparation stage preceding genocide.

Since 2010, ties between the Sudanese president al-Bashir and the Chadian president have improved. Although Chad is a state-party to the Rome Treaty of the International Criminal Court, which has issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir, Chad refused to arrest Bashir when he visited the country in August 2010.

The improvement in relations between Chad and Sudan has not ended the hopeless situation of hundreds of thousands refugees in Chad. According to a report of Human Rights Watch (2011), there are still more than 250,000 Sudanese refugees and 168,000 Chadian displaced people in the eastern part of the country.

In February 2011, a report of the International Crisis group raised an Alert about Chad’s Northwest, as the next high-risk area where violence and famine could endanger human lives. The region is totally ignored by the Chadian government, and very few international relief organizations have operations there.

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