Sudan & Human Rights 2005
Thursday, August 4, 2005
FREE-FOR-ALL SLAUGHTER OF
CHRISTIANS IN ISLAMIC SUDAN
ARAB MUSLIMS ON SLAUGHTER SPREE OF SOUTH SUDANESE CHRISTIANS
WILL BUSH ADMINISTRATION TURN BLIND EYE AND PRETEND THAT NOTHING HAPPENED ???
By Jeremy Reynalds
Special Correspondent for ASSIST News Service
KHARTOUM, SUDAN (ANS) - Aug 4/05 - As news reports on retaliatory killings and violence against South Sudanese Christians in Khartoum
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khartoum) surface, armed Arab Muslim gangs continue to roam the streets of the city and suburbs, despite the dawn-to-dusk curfew.
“I am extremely worried about these recent grave developments in Sudan, especially since the Sudanese government is not willing to take immediate and stern action to stop the
killings,” said Sabit Alley, a leader in the South Sudanese Community in America and an Associate Representative of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M), in an SPLA/M news release. “Members of the South Sudanese Community fear that the world will witness a repeat of the Rwandan Genocide in Khartoum if the killing does not stop.”
According to the news release, the “racially and religiously motivated attacks” were instigated by
“ fanatic Muslim
clerics ” in retaliation for demonstrations and riots carried out by South Sudanese youth in the capital of Khartoum to protest the weekend death of their leader Dr. John Garang.
Garang was recently sworn in as First Vice President of Sudan, following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the Sudanese Islamic Fundamentalist government and the SPLA/M.
Southern Sudanese are concerned, SPLA/M reported, that the government, a perpetrator of the
22-year genocidal war against them (Verified by Countless Human
Rights Groups), is responsible for the death of Garang, and therefore they are calling for an international investigation of the crash.
Though media reports place the number killed since Saturday at about 130, the SPLA/M news release reported that other accounts from the city and the outskirts of Khartoum, where much of the violence is now occurring, indicate that the number killed may be as high as 400.
According to the news release, eyewitnesses said over 100 dead bodies have been thrown into the River
Nile, and many of the homes and churches of Sudanese Christians have been destroyed in the suburbs.
“Despite the government’s call for calm, the killing is escalating,” Alley said in the news release. “South Sudanese residents in Khartoum report that Muslim religious leaders have declared a jihad (religious holy war), and are mobilizing their followers to carry out revenge killings on Christians living in the city and its suburbs.”
According to the SPLA/M release, members of the South Sudanese Community in the Diaspora are calling on the U.S. and the International Community for intervention to help stop the killing of South Sudanese Christian civilians in Khartoum and its suburbs, preserve the CPA and ensure that peace is established.
And in a recently issued news release, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom
(USCIRF) extended its condolences to the people of Sudan following Garang’s death.
The news release read in part, “Dr. Garang was a voice for fair treatment for all of Sudan's marginalized peoples, including most recently the Muslim Africans of Darfur who have been subjected to genocide by the ruling elite in Khartoum.
“In light of the loss of Dr. Garang, the Commission believes more than ever that U.S. leadership is crucial for peace for Sudan. In order to ensure that peace, stability, and reconciliation are achieved in Sudan, the Commission continues to recommend that the U.S. government remains engaged at the highest levels in bringing about a just and lasting peace for all of Sudan.”
The Real Problem about the Sudan is CHINA and its Petroleum Company
Syria, the Sudan and China
Syria is known as the principal financial backer and political sponsor of the Islamic extremist organization Hezbollah (Party of God), which has claimed responsibility for countless hijackings, bombings, and kidnappings against Americans and Israelis alike.
Despite Syria's terrorist links, Houston-based energy company Conoco, in partnership with Total Fina Elf, began producing gas from the eastern Deir e-Zour region of Syria in the first quarter of 2002. Royal Dutch Petroleum and PetroCanada are likewise allied with the state-owned Syrian Petroleum Company. This partnership, known as Al Furat Petroleum, accounts for 60 percent of Syrian production, and oil revenues typically account for 60 percent of Syrian export revenues.
Meanwhile, in Sudan—the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) and its subsidiary, PetroChina, have been active since August of 1999. PetroChina is apparently unconcerned with Sudan's active human slave trade. The company has reportedly helped attract revenues of approximately $200 million a year to the Sudanese government. In addition to its involvement with human slavery, this is the same Sudanese government that has granted asylum to hundreds of known terrorists, including Osama bin Laden.
Sudanese strongman Hassan al Turabi has advertised his intent to use the profits from CNPC's operations to stockpile tanks and missiles for use in his genocidal assault against black Christians and animists in the south of that country, which has already claimed the lives of more than two million people.
The University of Texas is directly linked to all of this.
Sudan Not Repressive Enough ? Russia to Equip Sudan with Armored Personnel Carriers (APC) for Military
Gateway to Russia News - Feb 16-17/05 - The Arzamas
Engineering plant is engaged in several export contracts on delivering armour,
the official web-site of the Ruspromavto company reported on Wednesday [16
February].
It said that the plant would export 48 Vodnik cross-country
vehicles to Uruguay, and that it had signed contracts with Sudan on delivering
30 BTR-80 APCs respectively.
In addition to that, the Arzamas plant participates in a
big-ticket tender on exporting APCs to Bangladesh, the plant's director general
Valentin Kopalkin said at the ongoing IDEX 2005 arms show in Abu Dhabi.
"We are displaying the BTR-90 at the IDEX arms show, and
we hope that the region will become interested in the new vehicle. The parties
interested have already submitted requests for the vehicle, including those
envisioning joint ventures," Kopalkin said.
He noted that the plant was actively upgrading BTR-60s,
BTR-70s, and BRDM-2s, produced earlier. Many states operate several
dozen thousands of such vehicles.
"We have conducted state tests and fielded modernized BTR-60s and BTR-70s.
State tests of the BRDM-2 vehicle will be completed in late March, after which
it will also be fielded," Kopalkin said.
Thursday, February 3, 2005
"NEVER AGAIN" NOW MEANS "NEVER AGAIN -- EXCEPT FOR BLACK
FACES"
By Mel Middleton of Freedom Quest International
Special to ASSIST News Service
TROCHU, AB, CANADA (ANS) -- Those of us who have seen the
United Nations (which this past year has had Sudan as the chair of its Human
Rights Commission) repeatedly botch the whole issue of African genocides, were
not surprised at this week's UN report on Darfur. For obvious and transparent
political reasons, the UN, once again, chose political expediency over
protection for the innocent, and has let Khartoum's genocidal dictators off the
hook by declaring that what is happening in Darfur is "not
genocide" but only that crimes "just as heinous as
genocide" are occurring.
In this, the report mimics the fence-sitting tactics of the European Union,
which used the cop-out phrase of "tantamount to genocide." If
something is "tantamount to genocide," and if acts are occurring which
are "as heinous as genocide" are taking place, then why not call it
genocide?
The answer is simple. If it is
"genocide," under international law, the UN is obligated to do
something about it. And no one wants to do that. It’s easier to use
tricks, word games and semantics. Even so, coming as it does during the very
week when the world commemorated the 60th anniversary of the liberation of
Auschwitz, this ducking of the whole issue of genocide is particularly
despicable.
The United Nations and the countries which support this report -- including
Canada -- are now guilty of complicity in genocide. They have studied the case
of genocide in Darfur; they have reviewed the evidence; seen the horrific
atrocities, read the documentation, analyzed the findings, extrapolated the
political and economic costs, yet despite all this, have deliberately chosen,
with conscious and informed deliberation, to duck.
Once again, Khartoum gets away with genocide.
Can anything be more horrific and repulsive? Can anything be more telling of the
moral depravity to which the international system has fallen?
"Never Again" now means "Never Again -- except for black
faces"
Genocide is genocide! And it MUST end!
Sudan: Southern Peace Deal Leaves Room for Violence in Darfur
All Africa- Jan 10/05 - The comprehensive peace agreement signed on Sunday, January 9, 2005, in Nairobi, Kenya, marks the end of more than 20 years of war in southern Sudan, but this conflict must not be confused with the war still going on in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, on the border with Chad, the Vatican-based Fides news agency has said.
The religio-economic conflict in southern Sudan started in 1983 when the government extended Islamic Sharia law to the southern regions where people are mainly animists and Christians. Religion was used as a mask to cover more concrete interests. The war was, in part, economic. The south was robbed of its riches, not only oil but also precious timber, (mahogany teak, etc). The people rebelled and the ensuing war left more than 2 million dead, millions of refugees and displaced persons as well as widespread devastation.
region of extreme poverty which has no resources or infrastructures. The 'Fur' (hence 'Darfur' in
Arabic 'house of Fur') are mainly farmers. Over the years other peoples, mainly Arab herdsmen from various parts of Sudan settled in the region.
This led to regular clashes between local Fur farmers and "immigrant" herdsmen over pastures, water, and the few patches of fertile land. The disputes were settled by traditional tribal mediation.
The Fur have always accused the central government of neglecting their region, denying it the means for development, no roads, no hospitals.
This led to the formation of two guerrilla movements which oppose the government in Khartoum claiming more attention for the region.
The government's reaction to the Darfur rebellion was ferocious, transforming the conflict into an all-out war. The Arab herdsmen were organised to form the murderous Janjaweed horsemen which, with the support of regular Sudanese air force bomber helicopters and planes, launches systematic attacks on villages thought to support the rebellion.
Sudan signs peace accord -
(at least "officially)
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Jan 9/05 -Sudan's government and southern rebels have signed a comprehensive peace deal ending Africa's longest-running civil war, witnesses say.
Sudan's First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha and John Garang, chairman of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), signed the accord on Sunday at a ceremony in Kenya's capital Nairobi, ending a 21-year-old old conflict in the south that has killed an estimated two million people mainly through famine and disease.
The accord does not cover a separate conflict in the western Darfur area of Africa's largest country, where almost two years of fighting has created what the United Nations says is one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
In front of 12 African heads of state or government and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Garang and Taha put their names to a series of protocols signed by junior colleagues in two years of talks that together constitute an overall accord including a permanent ceasefire.
Sudan in History: Riddle of the sands
Sept 9/04 - Guardian/UK - Can the British Museum's new show of Sudanese sand sculptures, paintings and chain-mail armour tell us anything about the country's bloody present? Jonathan Jones finds out
On the morning I went to see Sudan: Ancient Treasures, an exhibition at the British Museum surveying the archaeology of Africa's biggest country over the past 200,000 years, the latest news from Sudan was that 3,000 more people had been driven from their homes. One million have already been displaced, and refugees say that up to 55,000 people have been killed by the Arab Janjaweed militias who attack villages following air raids. The Sudanese government denies any involvement. The UN cannot agree on whether this is genocide or merely a humanitarian catastrophe.
It's difficult to see how weathered sandstone monuments to the pharaohs and the kings of Kush, Christian paintings and Muslim armour from the battle of Omdurman can possibly help us to understand these events. How does going to see an exhibition in tranquil Bloomsbury, then visiting the museum shop or chatting about the Janjaweed over coffee, achieve anything?
The exhibition is free, but visitors are asked to make a donation to Oxfam and Save the Children. It's also accompanied by lectures, study days and ethnographic displays claiming a contemporary relevance. Neil MacGregor, the BM's director, sees this as part of an ambitious attempt to make the museum an enlightened centre of enquiry, debate and global understanding. It seems a lot to load on an exhibition, on history, on museums.
The British Museum proposes to tell us something about what is happening in Egypt's immense southern neighbour by collecting objects that date from the paleolithic era - Homo Erectus first settled this part of Africa 300,000 years ago, and one of the earliest grinding stones was found here - up to the 19th century. Such an all-encompassing attempt to know a place is in the Enlightenment tradition of Napoleon's Description of Egypt, the mammoth tome illustrating every aspect of Egyptian archaeology and natural history created by French scholars. In his famous 1978 book Orientalism, Edward Said argued that all such totalising European claims to knowledge of the other are a form of power over what is so easily, so elegantly described. Massively influential, Said's book, whatever its original value, has become a pernicious block on thought. This exhibition demonstrates why. It quietly asserts that knowledge might actually be a good thing.
Sand is the first thing you become aware of. So much here is made of red sandstone, soft, worn, almost crumbling before your eyes. That is the big difference between the art of ancient Nubia and the monuments of the pharaohs. The Egyptians preferred to carve their gods and hieroglyphs in granite, hard enough to endure eternity.
Egyptian art subtly changed when it was adopted in what is now Sudan. About 3,500 years ago, on a rock above the fourth cataract of the Nile, Turi, viceroy of the Egyptian ruler Tuthmose I, had an inscription carved to mark the limit of the Egyptian empire. At that moment, the builders of the pyramids controlled not just the Mediterranean Nile but a region extending deep into the African continent. A carved stone stela in this exhibition, from the reign of Seti I (c1294-1279BC), shows Seti using a scimitar given him by the god Amen-Ra to smite the Nubians of the upper Nile.
Bush signs [Weak] Sudan sanctions bill
BBC - Dec 24/04 - US President George W Bush has signed into law legislation that enables him to impose sanctions on Sudan, in protest at the violence in Darfur.
Measures include a travel ban on Sudanese leaders and the freezing of officials' and companies' assets.
The new law calls on the president to encourage other United Nations members to implement similar sanctions.
The United States has already declared the attacks in Darfur, where some 70,000 have died, to be genocide.
It blames pro-government Arab militia - known as the Janjaweed - for much of the fighting which has forced some 1.8 million people from their homes in what the UN terms as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
Khartoum has denied allegations it is backing the Janjaweed.
Correspondents say it is not yet clear what action Mr Bush will take, as the law in not binding.
U.N.
Report Reveals ---> U.N. Not Protecting Sudan Refugees
GENEVA - Nov 26/04 - The United Nations is failing to protect millions of people displaced by conflict in Sudan's Darfur region and violence in other hotspots around the world, a U.N. report said Friday.
The world body's approach to the problem of people who have fled their homes but not crossed any international borders "is still largely ad hoc and driven more by the personalities and convictions of individuals on the ground than by an institutional, systemwide agenda," the report said.
The U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, compiled the 102-page study.
Dennis McNamara, head of OCHA's refugee division, said there is no single U.N. agency that deals with providing assistance for the 25 million internally displaced people around the world.
More than 1.8 million people are estimated to have been driven from their homes in the 21-month-old Darfur conflict.
The war began when rebel groups took up arms against Sudan's Arab-dominated government for what they saw as years of state neglect and discrimination against the region's African tribal population. The government responded by backing Arab militias that have been accused of targeting civilians in a campaign of murder, rape and arson.
International agencies estimate that since March, disease, malnutrition and clashes among the displaced have killed more than 70,000 people. Many more have died in the fighting, but no firm estimate of the direct war toll exists.
Three different U.N. agencies have staff in Darfur, but their access to the displaced and their activity there have frequently been limited because Sudan's government has at times been reluctant to allow outside involvement, McNamara said.
The Sudanese government is allowing the United Nations access to camps in Darfur, but U.N. activity is still limited by a lack of staff and funding. That shortage means the world body has been unable to provide AIDS (news - web sites) tests and psychological counseling for rape victims in Darfur's camps, which McNamara called unacceptable.
SUDANESE SLAVE 'CRUCIFIED' BY HIS MASTER NOT UNUSUAL IN CENTRAL AFRICAN NATION
Tuesday, November 9, 2004
SUDANESE SLAVE 'CRUCIFIED' BY HIS MASTER NOT UNUSUAL IN CENTRAL AFRICAN NATION
But Christian Teen Rescued, Redeemed, Still Lives With Scars; Evidence Exists Of Others Sentenced To Crucifixion By Khartoum Government
By Michael Ireland
Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service
KHARTOUM, SUDAN (ANS) -- After being nailed to a board by his master and left for dead -- the last in a series of torturous acts -- a Sudanese Dinka boy escaped from his bondage and lived to tell his horrific story.
(Pictured: Joseph today. Credit: Persecution Project
Foundation).
The story of "Joseph," a Christian, is told in a recent newsletter of the Persecution Project Foundation, an organization that monitors Christian persecution in Africa, reports WorldNetDaily.net.
PPF's Brad Phillips recently returned from visiting Joseph, who originally was sold into slavery at age 7 in 1987.
"I had the privilege of spending a day with this amazing boy who is now called Joseph," Phillips wrote. "I spoke with him, I interviewed him, I saw his scars, and I saw his eyes. What I saw moved me, and still haunts me."
Phillips explained that since the 1980s, the Muslim National Islamic Front
government has sanctioned the taking of Christians and animists from the south part of the nation to be sold to Muslims as slaves in the north. The two sides have been engaged in a civil war for several years. (Pictured: Map of Sudan. Credit: Nationmaster.com web site).
As a 7-year-old, Joseph, then called Santino Garang, was sold to his master, Ibrahim. Though Joseph was given an Arab name, Ibrahim referred to him only by the pejorative "Abid," which means black slave, writes Phillips. For ten years, Joseph remained in bondage to his master.
"During his enslavement ," Phillips wrote, "he was often beaten, tortured and abused by his Arab master. African slaves, especially Christians, are viewed as lower than animals.
"Joseph was raised Christian. His desire to worship was mocked by his master, who told him every day for 10 years that he had no business worshipping since he was of no more value than a donkey."
One Sunday morning, Joseph heard the hymn singing of a Christian service. He joined into the worship, remembering church services from when he was a young boy.
While Joseph was at church, some of the camels he was in charge of escaped, and his master flew into a rage. Ibrahim, Phillips writes, "swore he would kill Joseph and do to him what had been done to Jesus ... he would crucify him.
"After brutally beating Joseph on the head and all over his body, the master laid him out on a wooden plank. He then nailed Joseph to the plank by driving nine-inch nails through his hands, knees and feet. He then poured acid on Joseph's legs to inflict even greater pain, and finally left him for dead."
Miraculously, Joseph did not die, even though he lay on the plank for seven days. He survived through the kindness of his master's son, who brought him food and water, and eventually took him to a medical facility. (Pictured: Joseph's burned legs. Credit: Persecution Project Foundation).
"In case you are wondering," wrote Phillips, "no criminal charges were brought against Joseph's master, because he acted within his 'rights' under currently practiced 'sharia law.' To say that Christians are second-class citizens in much of the Islamic world (not just the Sudan) is a cruel understatement."
After Joseph returned from the hospital, his master saw little value in him since he was crippled from the nails being driven through his knees. Joseph was "redeemed" by Christian slave redeemers who arranged his return home to his village in Bahr el Gazal.
When he arrived back in his home village, the elders thought he should have a new name, so they named him after Joseph of the Bible, who was sold into slavery but later was used mightily by God.
Phillips said: "Joseph still desperately needs your prayers. By God's grace Joseph survived kidnapping, the loss of his parents, ten years of enslavement, and near death by crucifixion. But while Joseph is free in body, he is still in great pain physically and emotionally. He bears the marks of his crucifixion in his body and the scars of his torment in his soul. He is wounded and broken in his spirit. And his is haunted by the memories of hundreds of other children from his community who perished or remained enslaved in the north.
He added: "Joseph is one of a small number of people in the 21st century who knows what it means to be crucified because of his Christian faith. But the reality is that hundreds of thousands of our fellow Christians in the Sudan have been enslaved, driven from their homes, hunted and murdered by devoted followers of Islam. This war of Islamic cruelty has raged for centuries in the Sudan. Please remember our Sudanese brethren in your prayers, and do all you can to aid us in the relief of their suffering."
MODERN CRUCIFIXIONS
Crucifixion, while rare in recent times, was used at Dachau during the Holocaust and in a number of wars, such as in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and during the Sino-Japanese war, where it was used among the many methods of torture and execution used by Japanese soldiers against Chinese civilians -- largely in emulation of medieval Japanese military practices, says the website http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Crucifixion.
During World War I, there were persistent rumors that German soldiers had crucified an Allied (Canadian) soldier on a tree or barn door with bayonets or combat knives, the website says. The event was initially reported in 1915 by private George Barrie of the Canadian First Division. After the war, investigators tried to determine the veracity of the story of the crucified soldier, but it was inconclusive.
Thenazareneway.com website reports there are persistent stories that crucifixions continue to occur in certain parts of Africa, particularly in Sudan.
Amnesty International reported on August 22, 2002 its “grave concern that time was running out for 88 people, including two children, sentenced to death by hanging or crucifixion in Sudan, for their alleged role in ethnic clashes in Rizeigat, Southern Darfur.
"Everything is wrong with this case. Not only have death sentences been passed, which Amnesty International opposes unconditionally, but they were passed after an obviously unfair trial. Those sentenced include two children, despite the worldwide ban on sentencing children under the age of 18 to death," the organization said at the time.
Amnesty said that Emergency Courts, sometimes known as the "special courts" sentenced the 88 people to death by hanging or crucifixion in Nyala on 17 July 2002, on charges including murder, armed robbery and public disturbances. The charges were all related to recent clashes between the Rizeigat and Maalayia ethnic groups in Southern Darfur.
Africa Newswire Network citing IRIN, the United Nations Integrated Regonal Information Networks, from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said international human rights organizations expressed concern over the fate of 88 people, including two children, who were sentenced to death by hanging or crucifixion in Sudan's Darfur region for taking part in ethnic clashes.
The report stated the Sudanese government reportedly said it would not overturn the death sentences against the 88 people convicted of taking part in May clashes between the ethnic al-Muraalia and Reizagat tribes. At least 50 people were killed in the clashes.
According to Amnesty, the "emergency courts" sometimes known as "special courts," were established in Darfur under a 1998 state of emergency, which grants wide powers to circumvent Sudan's Criminal Procedures Act. The courts are headed by two military judges and one civilian judge and do not permit legal representation for the accused, the agency said.
The Geneva-based International Secretariat of World Organizations Against Torture (OMCT) said it was deeply concerned over the health of the detainees and the "continuing wave of arbitrary arrests and detentions" in Darfur.
In a statement, the OMCT urged the Khartoum government to carry out an impartial investigation into the "arbitrary circumstances" under which some of the prisoners were arrested and detained, as well as reports of the use of torture.
"More generally, OMCT is concerned by the reported worsening human rights situation in Darfur, which includes mass arrests, harsh detention conditions and the continuing persecution of the people from the African tribes native to the region," it added.
"The government of Sudan must now ensure that the sentences are not carried out," Amnesty International said. "It should put an end to this cruelty."
Paul H. Liben contributed the article "Science Within the Limits of Truth" to the December 1991 issue of First Things, the Journal of Religion, Culture, and Public Life, which was posted to the Firsthings.com website.
He said Jubilee Campaign, a Christian human rights organization, noted "mounting evidence of the crucifixion of the male populations of entire villages."
When the Vatican protested in 1992, Khartoum replied: "The Catholic Church has become the enemy of the Sudanese government. We know how to deal with it."
Liben said: “What was meant was apparent. Last summer, according to Vatican Radio, four Catholics were arrested, flogged a hundred times, and then crucified.”
Liben wrote that according to a 1993 State Department report, the "government of Sudan forces routinely steal women and children. Some women and children are kept as wives. Others are shipped north where they perform forced labor or are exported, notably to Libya."
He said that in his scathing 1994 report to the UN Commission on Human Rights, special investigator Gaspar Biro confirmed that “the (Sudanese) north is kidnapping women and children and selling or using them as concubines or slaves. Biro also notes that the present regime
allows the crucifixion of children as young as seven.”
400 Sudanese security men to be trained in Egypt
Egypt-Sudan, Local, 11/26/2004
A 107-strong group of Sudanese security men arrived at Cairo International Airport yesterday to attend a security training course in Cairo.
The group is the third batch of 400 Sudanese security men to receive training in Egypt before being deployed in the troubled western Sudanese region of
Darfur.
Shame of Islam
Islamic World helps Sudan Despite repression of Christians & Human Rights Violations
OPEC international development fund grants loan to Sudan
4/14/2000 Sudan, Economics & politics
The International Development Fund of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries OPEC granted Sudan a $10 million loan to develop its electricity network.
The loan accord was signed in Fez-- on the fringes of the Arab Financial Institutions joint meetings-- by the Sudanese minister of finance and national economy and the chairman of the administrative board of the OPEC fund.
Story
Here
Sudan's oil output up 56 percent to 200,000 barrels
4/13/2000
Sudan's oil output has jumped 56 % from 128,000 daily to 200,000 barrels per day, largely from the addition of new productive wells of the Unity and Heglig oil fields in the South and West of the country, respectively.
State television Wednesday quoted the minister of energy and mining, Awad el Jaz, as saying that the doors of Sudan were open for new investors in the oil industry.
Story
Here
Sudan starts oil exports
8/31/1999
Arabic News - Sudan on Monday exported the first shipment of its crude oil. A carrier heading for Singapore was loaded with 600,000 barrels of oil from Port Sudan harbor.
On this occasion, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir presided over a ceremony in Port Sudan, in which he stressed in a speech he delivered that oil revenues will be used in developing Sudan.
The Sudanese oil is transported via a 1,610 pipeline, linking the biggest oil field in Sudan in Hajliej in the southern province of Kardofan to the site where oil is poured in Bashayar
Story
Here
My Career Redeeming Slaves (and the real U.N.)
by John Eibner
Nur Muhammad al-Hasan emerges from the Sudanese bush. His loose, once-bright white jalabiya flutters as he strides towards me. I in turn step through the long, dry grass towards him, stooping slightly as I walk under the weight of a U.S. army kit bag full of grimy Sudanese bank notes. It is April 1999 and the midday sun is oppressive. Nur and I greet each other with a handshake and "Salam ‘alaykum." We slip under the shade of an enormous mango tree where we have some important business to discuss: The liberation of slaves, mainly women and children.
Our enterprise is not to everyone's liking. Last spring, Sudan's government, the radical Islamist regime of the National Islamic Front (NIF) headed by Hasan at-Turabi and Gen. ‘Umar al-Bashir, protested to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights about our work. The regime claims that my organization, Christian Solidarity International (CSI), is the main source of the abduction and kidnapping of children in southern Sudan.1 In April, the Khartoum regime also initiated proceedings to deny CSI its consultative status at the United Nations (U.N.), alleging that we act contrary to the purposes and principles of the U.N.
charter.
About the same time, the world's richest and most influential child welfare organization, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund
(UNICEF), ended its long silence on the enslavement of Sudanese woman and children. Instead of condemning the slavers, UNICEF—whose mandate requires it to work in partnership with the government of Sudan—echoed Khartoum by calling our liberation of slaves
"absolutely intolerable," (!!!)
and by accusing us of violating the Slavery Convention. Others, with agendas of their own, perhaps working with the Sudanese regime or trying to salvage their own tarnished reputations, have spread rumors of fraud about these
activities.
Saudi Arabia grants Sudan $375 million
8/18/1999
Arabic News - The government of Saudi Arabia has offered Sudan a grant of $ 375 million (100 million Saudi riyals) to boost its water, educational and health services.
Panafrican news agency PANA said the grant will be used to upgrade existing infrastructure and the construction of new ones.
According to the source, a joint Sudanese-Saudi committee set up to coordinate expenditure of the fund has begun to examine tenders put forward by 29 Saudi firms for the implementation of the projects.
Sudanese minister of justice: Sudan has no future without Egypt
6/1/1999
Arabic News - Sudanese Minister of Justice and Attorney General Mohammed Othman Yassin, stated that Sudan has no future without Egypt, specifically in light of current developments that witness a real threat to Sudan's identity.
He also expressed his hope that disputes that have taken place in the past would "just be a summer cloud so we can learn from previous mistakes."
Holocaust in Sudan: Does anyone care?
by Dan Wooding
The Russian-made MU2 Antonov aircraft, with Sudanese government markings, made six bombing runs on Thursday, March 23, over the grounds of the Christian Liberty Academy of Southern Sudan in Western Equatoria, dropping one or two 250-pound-shrapnel bombs at a time. This bombing mission by the Islamic-led government forces of Sudan inflicted numerous injuries on students and their parents.
Over 100 high-school-age students from the Moru tribe are enrolled in the recently completed boarding school facility, which is being sponsored and financed by the Christian Liberty Academy of Arlington Heights, Illinois, a 910-student school on the edge of Chicago. Students, parents and others were making final preparations at the school when the attack came.
Following the bombing, Dr. Paul D. Lindstrom, Superintendent of the Christian Liberty Academy education system, which has schools in Russia, Surinam, South Africa and elsewhere, called for "total U.S. sanctions" against the Islamic government in Khartoum.
"We are outraged by the continuing persecution of black Christians, moderate Muslims, animists and other non-Muslims in Southern Sudan by the military regime in Khartoum who controls the Sudanese government," he said. "It is accurate to say that the government of Sudan is engaged in genocide, especially against the black African Sudanese. And the silence of the U.S. government to all of this is deafening.
"This is not a political issue for us. Rather, it concerns the saving of children's lives and education. If the Sudanese government has bombed us once, they will do it again. Why is the U.S. assisting Muslims in Kosovo, Bosnia and elsewhere, including the providing of military aid, and yet forsaking Christians in southern Sudan? The ten-year reign of Sudan government terror must cease!"
Hospitals Targeted
The school was fortunate. No one died in the incident. But this was not the case
when the National Islamic Front (NIF) government of Sudan bombed a hospital
sponsored by American Christian groups in the rebel-controlled south, killing
two people and injuring several others. It was the third reported bombing of a
southern Sudanese hospital in a two-week period.
Government aircraft dropped about a dozen bombs on the town of Nimule, on the White Nile River just north of the border with Uganda, according to Wes Bentley, the head of California-based Far Reaching Ministries, which trains chaplains at the hospital. "I think they just dropped a whole load on the city and didn't care where they hit," Bentley told Newsroom, based in the U.K.
Wes Bentley said that one chaplain was killed in the attack and another five chaplains were wounded along with a cook, who was struck in the head by a piece of shrapnel. "A bomb killed Tombek Marcello Daniel, a chaplain in training, as he ran out of a building near the hospital," said Bentley, who spends about half of his year in Sudan. The 28-year-old was married with three children.
Human rights groups say that NIF forces have frequently targeted civilian buildings, ignoring the principles of the Geneva Convention. Earlier this year NIF bombers also struck a hospital in the southern city of Lui, run by North Carolina-based Samaritan's Purse. With no military facilities within miles, bombs dropped by the Islamic Government of Sudan aircraft targeted the Samaritan's Purse civilian missionary hospital. The first attack killed at least two people and injured many others.
"The government of Sudan just continues to demonstrate that they are a terrorist nation," said Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan's Purse and son of Rev. Billy Graham. "For more than 25 years, Samaritan's Purse has helped people all over the world recover from wars of hatred, but this is the first time we've ever been so blatantly and continuously attacked by the government of the very people we are trying to help."
In spite of this and the previous attack, which killed two people and wounded dozens, Samaritan's Purse is committed to keeping the hospital open. Graham said, "Our medical staff is committed to staying because we operate the largest hospital in southern Sudan, treating more than one million people since 1997."
A Controversial Document
Voice of the Martyrs was among 26 groups that signed a "memorandum of
understanding" with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) that
allowed them to continue working in the southern rebel-controlled part of the
country under certain conditions. About a dozen groups, including World Vision
International, refused to sign, contending that the agreement would have placed
their staff, equipment and relief aid under SPLM control.
Open Doors, the international ministry begun more than four decades ago by Brother Andrew, the Dutch-born author of God's Smuggler, has announced that it will stay in the war-torn country and will continue to deliver Bibles and conduct training for Christians in the south.
"Open Doors is not leaving Sudan. We have a completely different strategy for how we conduct our ministry. We don't seek official government permission for our work, but rather we operate independently and work directly and only with the indigenous Sudanese church," explained Terry Madison, the President and CEO of Open Doors USA. "Although we have done relief work in Sudan food, clothing, medical supplies our primary ministry there is to strengthen the Christian Church through supplying Bibles and training pastors for the work of the Gospel in what is one of the most repressive countries of the world. So we have decided to stay."
Ruthless and Aggressive Persecution of Christians
Reflecting on Open Doors' commitment to continue its ministry in Sudan, Brother
Andrew went on to describe the situation and the need: "I know of no other
place on earth where the persecution of Christians is more ruthless and
aggressive than the Islamic Republic of Sudan. In southern Sudan, Islamic troops
attack unarmed villages, killing our brothers burning their homes, churches and
health clinics, and taking our sisters and their children as slaves.
"Government bombers terrorize the people as they thunder over their homes. And now their bombs contain deadly chemicals. The poison has killed children and caused many of our sisters to miscarry their unborn babies.
"The bombing and ground attacks, in addition to the famine the government has caused by cutting off international aid, has forced countless people from their homes and farms."
Brother Andrew went on to describe the refugee camps: "There, women are raped. Food is withheld from Christians who refuse to renounce their faith and embrace Islam. Yet even as I share this horrible description, remember that this is only the physical expression of the spiritual war being waged in Sudan. The Muslims, even the cruelest, are not our enemies."
He then called for urgent prayer for the believers of southern Sudan. "Although Open Doors has sent, and continues to send, humanitarian aid to our suffering brothers and sisters, we are most powerful when we are on our knees."
"Second in impact to our prayers are the Bibles and other Christian literature that we put in their hands."
A Jihad on the South
The indiscriminate slaughter of two million people, mostly black Christians, but
also Muslims and animists has been brought about by the National Islamic Front (NIF)
who long ago declared a jihad (holy war) on the south. Human rights observers
say that NIF violates almost every provision of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights.
Linda Slobodian of the Calgary Herald, who has traveled frequently to southern Sudan, wrote, "Civil war has raged in Sudan for 17 years. The NIF's war effort, strengthened by revenues since last fall from oil projects fueled by foreign investment, has brazenly stepped up its assault on civilians. Reports of attacks on school children and hospitals steadily filter out. The West ignores them. More people have died in Sudan than in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Rwanda and Somalia combined."
She added, "Sudan is a place littered with graves of children. A place where government bombs fall like raindrops on civilian targets."
Harunn Runn, General Secretary of the New Sudan Council of Churches, the umbrella group for churches in southern Sudan, speaking at a Sudan consultation for U.S. church leaders sponsored by World Relief in Wheaton, Illinois, said that the war is not a Muslim crusade on the part of the north, but is rather a war of values. "It is a racial, economic and religious war," he stated.
"Religion is used to manipulate people." The
Shocking Story of Francis Bok Bol
According to a story in Religion Today, Francis Bok Bol was seven when his
mother sent him to the market to sell eggs. The boy became a commodity himself
that day.
Muslim troops raided the marketplace in southern Sudan, killing the adults and taking the children hostage, Charles Jacobs of the Sudan Campaign told Religion Today. Bol, a Christian, was thrown over a donkey and sold to a Muslim who forced him to convert to Islam, beat him and made him sleep in a barn. "He witnessed terrible things," Jacobs said. Bol, who escaped after 10 years in captivity, testified of the horror in Sudan at a rally outside the U.S. Capitol, May 23, 1999.
Christian Solidarity International (CSI), a Swiss-based human rights group has been active in buying back the freedom of more than 15,000 Sudanese slaves, and this has caused it to lose United Nations status. The U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) removed Christian Solidarity International's consultative status on October 26, 1999, by a vote of 26-14 with 12 abstentions. The vote endorsed a recommendation made earlier by the U.N.'s Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations.
John Eibner, CSI's representative to the U.N., insists that "there is a broad consensus of support" for CSI's slave redemption work among southern Sudanese tribal leaders, according to Newsroom. "The community leaders would not want us to redeem slaves if it meant more being taken into bondage, more being beaten, more villages burned," said Eibner, who helped secure freedom for 4,300 Sudanese slaves in October 1999.
Another View of Slavery
Clive Calver, President of World Relief, the international assistance arm of the
National Association of Evangelicals, has a different take on slavery.
He said, "World Relief applauds and supports abolition movements to end slavery in Sudan, but to truly facilitate churches working together, World Relief must honor the well-thought-out priorities of the Sudanese church. While slavery is an issue for them, it is currently not the primary one. Ending the war that has claimed two million lives, keeping another 2.4 million from starving to death and teaching them about Jesus are the top concerns they repeatedly voice to me.
"As Pastor Arkangelo Wani Lemi observed to me while I watched death happen, 'My people will not starve to death. We have brothers and sisters in the West; we are part of a family. Fight slavery, yes, but save lives and share Jesus as well.'"
World Relief says that since the 1998 famine, aid efforts in Sudan have had a profound effect on reducing starvation in southern Sudan. However, in many areas people's existence is tenuous at best as they depend on relief supplies for survival. There remain pockets of people with high malnutrition rates. Because of continued fighting and insecurity, some areas remain inaccessible to relief flights. Since the fall of 1998, World Relief has worked with southern Sudan's churches on several fronts as they address the massive suffering and complex issues facing their communities.
In February, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions that prohibit U.S. companies and citizens from doing business with partners of an oil pipeline project that according to Sudan's critics helps support the NIF's war machine.
The Liethnom area of southern Sudan has been repeatedly bombed, bombings intended to intimidate and discourage humanitarian workers. Following the most recent assaults by Sudanese military planes, Calver said, "It is an appalling travesty that the military forces of northern Sudan should target humanitarian endeavors aimed at improving the condition of the civilian population in Liethnom. At a time when the church there is exploding with life, I call upon churches in the U.S. to demonstrate solidarity with the church in Liethnom through their prayers and much needed humanitarian assistance at this time. We do not intend to leave our brothers and sisters to stand alone."
When will the horror in the Sudan end? Only when good people pray and take a stand against what is happening to innocent people in southern Sudan.
Assist News - Nov/Dec 2000
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THERE IS NOT ONE CHRISTIAN NATION ON EARTH WHERE MUSLIMS ARE PERSECUTED.
Yet in most nations where the majority of the population are Muslims, there is systematic government persecution of Christians.
"Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance."
--Article 18 of the Universal
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