Rebel groups in Darfur have rejected Chinese peacekeepers in the area on the grounds that China is supporting the government of Khartoum in violation of human rights.
Suleiman Marjan, a leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement, said Chinese engineers arriving in Darfur on Sunday should be aware that they are not welcome.
“Darfur is hostile to their presence,” he told the Sudan Tribune.
The rebel commander accused Beijing of being an accomplice of Khartoum in Darfur killings, and said the rebels would not cooperate with them.
The Justice and Equality Movement also said it would oppose the Chinese contingent.
China has sent 135 military engineers to Darfur, as part of a 26,000-strong international peacekeeping force, which will be comprised of troops contributed by the United Nations and the African Union (AU).
The suspicious attitude towards China stems from China’s financial dealings with the Sudanese government. China buys a large amount of Sudan’s oil and sells Khartoum weapons. Critics say China has failed to use its leverage to pressure Khartoum into ending the conflict in Darfur.
More than 200,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which began in early 2003. The government denies claims that it unleashed armed groups called Janjaweed against the people of Darfur and maintains the death toll is much lower than has been reported.
The U.N. plans to send the new hybrid force to replace a struggling 7,000-strong AU force, which has been unable to end the violence.
It is planned that the new force will be deployed in full during 2008.
The rejection by the Darfur rebels is not the first problem the peacekeepers are facing.
Sudanese President ‘Umar Al-Bashir said last week that he would refuse troops from Sweden or Norway, because of a series of cartoons that appeared in Scandinavian newspapers in 2006. The cartoons, depicting the Prophet Muhammad, were received with outrage from Muslims, as the drawings were seen as being offensive to Islam.
Earlier this year the row was reignited, but to a lesser extent, when a Swedish artist had a cartoon published in a Swedish newspaper which depicted the Prophet Muhammad as a dog.
“The boots of those who blasphemed the prophet will never trample on Sudanese land,” Al-Bashir said.
Denmark, Sweden and Norway have offered to contribute an engineering unit to the peacekeeping force.