By Hilary Andersson, BBC News, Darfur, Sunday, 13 July 2008-

The BBC has found the first evidence that China is currently helping Sudan’s government militarily in Darfur.

The Panorama TV programme tracked down Chinese army lorries in the Sudanese province that came from a batch exported from China to Sudan in 2005.

The BBC was also told that China was training fighter pilots who fly Chinese A5 Fantan fighter jets in Darfur.

(Photo at right: The BBC tracked down China-built military trucks inside Darfur)

China’s government has declined to comment on the BBC’s findings, which contravene a UN arms embargo on Darfur.

The embargo requires foreign nations to take measures to ensure they do not militarily assist anyone in the conflict in Darfur, in which the UN estimates that about 300,000 people have died.

More than two million people are also believed to have fled their villages in Darfur, destroyed by pro-government Arab Janjaweed militia.

Panorama traced the first lorry by travelling deep into the remote deserts of West Darfur.

They found a Chinese Dong Feng army lorry in the hands of one of Darfur’s rebel groups.

The BBC established through independent eyewitness testimony that the rebels had captured it from Sudanese government forces in December.

The rebels filmed a second lorry with the BBC’s camera. Both vehicles had been carrying anti-aircraft guns, one a Chinese gun.

Markings showed that they were from a batch of 212 Dong Feng army lorries that the UN had traced as having arrived in Sudan after the arms embargo was put in place.

The lorries came straight from the factory in China to Sudan and were consigned to Sudan’s defence ministry. The guns were mounted after the lorries were imported from China.

The UN started looking for these lorries in Darfur three years ago, suspecting they had been sent there, but never found them.

“We had no specific access to Sudanese government army stores, we were not allowed to take down factory codes or model numbers or registrations etc to verify these kinds of things,” said EJ Hogendoorn, a member of the UN panel of experts that was involved in trying to locate the lorries.

Culpability

China has chosen not to respond to the BBC’s findings. Its public position is that it abides by all UN arms embargoes.

China has said in the past that it told Sudan’s government not to use Chinese military equipment in Darfur.

Sudan’s government, however, has told the UN that it will send military equipment wherever it likes within its sovereign territory.

An international lawyer, Clare da Silva, says China’s point that it has taken measures in line with the arms embargo’s requirements to stop its weapons from going to Darfur is meaningless.

“It is an empty measure to take the assurances from a partner who clearly has no intention of abiding by the resolution,” she said.

Ms da Silva said the BBC’s evidence put China in violation of the arms embargo.

The UN panel of experts on Darfur has said it wants to examine the BBC’s evidence.

Homes scorched

The BBC found witnesses who said they saw the first Dong Feng which the BBC tracked down being used with its anti-aircraft gun in an attack in a town called Sirba, in West Darfur, in December.

“When it is shooting or firing there is nowhere for you to move and the sound is just like the sound of the rain. Then ‘Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!’” said Hamaad Abakar Adballa, a witness in the Chadian refugee town of Birak.

The lorry’s powerful anti-aircraft gun fired straight into civilian houses. The gun carries high calibre shells that explode on impact, spreading hot shards of metal and causing terrible wounds

Witnesses saw one hut take a direct hit from the gun:

“An intense wave of heat instantly sent all the huts around up in flames,” one witness, Risique Bahar, said. “There was a lot of screaming.”

In the attack on Sirba one woman was burnt to death, another horribly injured.

Genocide accusation

Sudan’s government has been accused by the United States of genocide against Darfur’s black Africans.