(CBS) We've all been hearing about something horrible in the African country of Sudan. So, 60 Minutes decided to go there to find out what's going on. What it found was evidence of a government-backed campaign to wipe out an entire race of people.

There are at least 50,000 dead, and a million on the run — facts that led the U.S. government last month to call what was happening genocide. Correspondent Scott Pelley reports. It started a year and a half ago in part of Sudan called Darfur. Rebels looking for a measure of freedom revolted against Sudan's authoritarian Islamic government. The government apparently decided to end the revolt by attempting to wipe out all the native Africans in Darfur, essentially to clear the territory for the Arabs.

Some of what 60 Minutes camera crews found is hard to watch. But the U.N. says this is the greatest crisis in the world today. What does genocide look like? 60 Minutes traveled to the middle of Africa, where innocent victims were pouring across the border of Sudan into Chad. There are 10 refugee camps up and down the Chad/Sudan border. Some are larger; others smaller.

One camp has about 19,000 refugees, but in the entire region, there are 189,000 refugees, and the U.N. is planning for another 100,000 on top of that. One camp is the farthest north, which means it's in the driest part of the Sahara. Walking around it, you are struck by one thing. If this is better than where they came from, imagine what they are fleeing.

Pelley visits one of the villages burning in Sudan. The Sudanese government has unleashed African Arabs, called the Janjaweed, to wipe out tribal blacks. The name Sudan ironically is Arabic, meaning "land of the blacks." But the Janjaweed is rewriting that history in blood. Janjaweed, by the way, has a translation, too. It means "evil on horseback."

What's been happening to these people over the last 17 months or so?

"They've been subjected to one of the most brutal campaigns of ethnic cleansing that Africa has ever seen," says John Prendergast, director of African Affairs at the National Security Council for the Clinton White House. He's now with the International Crisis Group, a human rights organization documenting the disaster in Sudan and neighboring Chad.

"A government-made hurricane hit Darfur over the last 17 months, using these Janjaweed militias. And the human debris has washed up on the shores of Chad," says Prendergast.

The refugees are from Sudan's western province, Darfur, a region the size of Texas. Prendergast calls the survivors "lucky." Many of these survivors were chased across the desert border into Chad by the Janjaweed.

"The Janjaweed are like a grotesque mixture of the mafia and the Ku Klux Klan. These guys have a racist ideology that sees the Arab population as the supreme population that would like to see the subjugation of non-Arab peoples," says Prendergast. "They're criminal racketeers that have been supported very directly by the government to wage the war against the people of Darfur."

Survivors say the attacks usually start at dawn, with bombs falling from planes of the Sudanese Air Force.

"And then here come the Janjaweed on camel or on horseback. They come rolling into the town, shooting and torching the village -- often bringing women to the side and raping women indiscriminately," says Prendergast. "And in order to ensure that the destruction is complete, the government either sends ground forces to oversee the operation, or the attack helicopters, which often are the most deadly things."

"They arrived on horseback, killed my husband and took my son," says Toona, who still doesn't know what happened to her son eight months later. She left Sudan with five surviving children after the Janjaweed burned her village.

"They never gave me a chance to talk to my child. Some of them dragged my son away, others slaughtered my husband, and some others took me to the side, and tortured me and left me there," says Toona. "My newborn was snatched off my back, and was left lying on the ground. I found him in that situation when they let me go."

Zara lost eight members of her family. "They attacked us very early in the morning, some militiamen on horseback and camels and some soldiers in military vehicles. There was an airplane above," she says. "They burned the village, they killed some people, they slashed their throats and captured others."

Zara's husband was killed, along with two children, two sisters and three brothers.

To reach Chad, Zara walked 10 days carrying a one-year-old boy -- now her only child. They found refuge in the sprawling camps that are an emergency response by the International Rescue Committee and the United Nations. They are holding the desert back with nothing more than tarps and trucks. Tents that go up white are soon painted by the Sahara. Food comes from hundreds of miles away. Water flows in, one tanker at a time.

60 Minutes found a four-month-old refugee and orphan in a shelter for severely malnourished children. His mother died in childbirth. His father was murdered in Sudan. All he has is a grandmother and five brothers.

His grandmother pours formula past his lips all day to wash away the hunger that nearly killed him. Many of the children bare the look of the hunted and the haunted. They are people holding on in the midst of a genocide that aims to exterminate them.

One of the things you notice is just how many kids there are, because most of the men are missing or dead. Ninety percent of the refugees are women and children.

"These guys have been through hell and back. And it's just amazing. Look at the smiles and the resilience that the Zagawa people, these are the people that have, are legendary within Sudan for their survival skill," says Prendergast.

One woman told Pelley she carried her one-year-old child for 12 days just to get to a camp. "These are the survivors. For many of those people, that was a death march," says Prendergast. "I mean, there were people they had to bury along the way."

"These are the lucky ones," adds Prendergast. "That tells you something about what's going on in Sudan today if these are the lucky ones."

The refugees are telling their stories to another American, Samantha Power. She's investigated ethnic cleansing in Sudan, Rwanda and Kosovo. Last year, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her book "A Problem From Hell, America and the Age of Genocide.'

What is the evidence that this is ethnic cleansing, or genocide?

"When the Janjaweed come in, and there is interaction between the Janjaweed and the local people, the Janjaweed are shouting ethnic slogans. They are saying, 'You blacks, you Zurga,' sort of like an equivalent of 'nigger.' Get out. You're slaves. You're a hyena. Never come back,'" says Power.

"When rape is committed, often the same epithets are issued. 'You're gonna give birth to a light-skinned child now.' They see their task, those who are racially motivated, as one of purification."

The death march of that "purification" runs through among the hottest, driest territory on earth. This summer, Power and Prendergast crossed the desert with 60 Minutes into Darfur.

We saw just how difficult a journey that can be. When it's dry, the sand gives way like water. When the rains come, riverbeds called Wadis fill with immoveable mud.

A lot of people are coming down through this way, and a lot of people don't make it this far.

"There are untold numbers of Darfurians who are stuck," says Power. "We encountered some of them as we drove eastward, and they said, 'If we had the means, we would get to Chad. We're too sick. We're too old. Please tell people to send help.'"

Five hundred of those people used to live in the village of Hengala. But in January, everything that could burn there did. Men, women, and children were driven out, dead or alive, by the Janjaweed.

Sudan's military government is telling the world that it has reined in the Janjaweed. But outside a town called Fariwiya, 60 Minutes found bodies of evidence that suggest otherwise. In July, anti-government rebels showed what they say is proof of continuing mass murder.

"The first thing that greeted us was decomposing flesh. And then, as we walked further up the hill, we saw, almost blending into the sand, the bodies of men who appeared to have been executed," says Power. "Most of the bullet holes seemed to have entered from the back of the head or the back itself. But the thing that I found the most haunting was the one of them had clearly made a run for it. And he almost looked like he was pleading for mercy."

And the living are still pleading.

In a landscape dominated by desolation, 60 Minutes found refugees still on the journey to the camps. A tree is home for 14-year-old Nasir and 16-year-old Mohammad. They crossed into Chad the night before. They told 60 Minutes their father, uncles, and brothers were killed, and their mother is missing. They've been in hiding and walking for eight months living on rainwater and whatever else they could find in the foothills.

The shade of the noor tree was their last stop before the refugee camp. With survivors swelling the camps, the threat of cholera or hepatitis rises with each new refugee. Infants are at most risk if disease begins to finish off what the government of Sudan and Janjaweed have started.

Power says a million people could die by natural causes, when the cause isn't natural at all.

"This won't look like Rwanda. If a million people die in Darfur, we'll all sigh and say, 'Isn't it a shame we couldn't get medicine to those poor, sick, Darfurians,'" says Power.

"As if they were poor and sick to begin with. Fifty thousand people have died so far. That's 50,000 too many. But when we know there are between a million and two million who can yet be saved, what is our excuse for watching this happen in slow motion?"

Power and Prendergast are calling for a large international force to impose peace in Darfur. Last week, several African countries offered a few thousand troops. There is no timetable for their arrival. In the meantime, the World Health Organization estimates another 6,000 people die every month in the Darfur genocide.

© MMIV, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Commentary:
The media tells us Bush supporters voted for him because of moral reasons. Apparently genocide in the Sudan isn't as moral or pressing issue as hating gays. Hypocrites. As I write this the Methodist Church has defrocked a lesbian minister and the Church is asking gays and gay friendly ministers to leave the Church.