Human rights issues in Sudan

Writing for The Wall Street Journal on December 12, 2001, Michael Rubin said:

I traveled to Sudan. Because Khartoum restricts the movement of visitors and tightly monitors with whom they speak, I went into the war-torn south of the country, where Muslims and Christians, Arabs and blacks meet and trade in the countryside and small towns outside of government control.

...[O]n Oct. 4, Sudanese Vice President Ali Uthman Taha declared, "The jihad is our way and we will not abandon it and will keep its banner high." ...Between Oct. 23-26, Sudanese government troops attacked villages near the southern town of Aweil, killing 93 men and enslaving 85 women and children. Then, on Nov. 2, the Sudanese military attacked villages near the town of Nyamlell, carrying off another 113 women and children. A Kenyan aide worker was also abducted, and has not been seen since.

What's Sudanese slavery like? One 11-year-old Christian boy told me about his first days in captivity: "I was told to be a Muslim several times, and I refused, which is why they cut off my finger." Twelve-year-old Alokor Ngor Deng was taken as a slave in 1993. She has not seen her mother since the slave raiders sold the two to different masters. Thirteen-year-old Akon was seized by Sudanese military while in her village five years ago. She was gang-raped by six government soldiers, and witnessed seven executions before being sold to a Sudanese Arab.

Many freed slaves bore signs of beatings, burnings and other tortures. More than three-quarters of formerly enslaved women and girls reported rapes.

While nongovernmental organizations argue over how to end slavery, few deny the existence of the practice. ...[E]stimates of the number of blacks now enslaved in Sudan vary from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands (not counting those sold as forced labor in Libya)...

Sudanese I interviewed indicated that in the wake of the World Trade Center attack, most Iraqi, Iranian, Pakistani and Palestinian residents of Sudanese terrorist training camps merely migrated south to government garrison towns where they would be out of sight of Khartoum-based diplomats and journalists. Former members of the military indicated that the Sudanese government still maintains chemical weapons stockpiles (allegedly acquired with Iraqi assistance) at the Juba airport, its stronghold in the far south of the country. Indeed, throughout the 1990s, Sudan not only provided a safe-haven for al Qaeda, but it also gave one to Iraqis working to develop chemical weapons, outside the view of U.N. weapons inspectors. [1] (http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature?id=95001587)

Also see the entry on the Persecution of Christians.

Other links to reports of abuses and atrocities:

• Human Rights Watch report on Sudan [2] (http://www.hrw.org/wr2k1/africa/sudan)
• International Christian Concern [3] (http://www.persecution.org/humanrights/sudan)
• ColorQ 1996-1998 [4] (http://www.colorq.org/HumanRights/default.htm)
  • 12 year old raped before her execution [5] (http://www.colorq.org/HumanRights/Sudan/UNreport.htm)
  • Arab Muslim North Sudan wage war of slavery against the black south [6] (http://www.colorq.org/HumanRights/Sudan/slavery.htm)
  • National Islamic Front capture and enslave Dinka civilians [7] (http://www.colorq.org/HumanRights/Sudan/slavetrail.htm)
  • Human-induced famine: crops destroyed, food distribution centers bombed [8] (http://www.colorq.org/HumanRights/Sudan/famine.htm)