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Table of Contents
Letter from Sudan: Buying a slave's freedom redeems us all
Ebony Magazine: THE TRUTH ABOUT SLAVERY IN SUDAN
SHRO-CAIRO REPORT ON SLAVERY IN THE SUDAN
Letter from Sudan: Buying a slave's freedom redeems us all
By 0, 8/12/2001
A bruised reed shall he not break, and a smoking flax shall he not quench until he send forth judgment unto victory. matthew 12:20
By The Rev. Gerald E. Bell
MARIAL BAI, Sudan - In this place where ants outnumber the grains of sand, where the trees seem older than mankind, and near where civilization is said to have begun, redemption comes to Dinka slaves.
The slaves, from a tribal clan that lives in South Sudan, are primarily women and children; the men of their villages were killed in raids by rivals from the North, Islamic fundamentalists who oppose the Dinka's Christian or traditionalist beliefs. The slaves have spent long years as the property of their Muslim captors, as a largely complicit Muslim government in Khartoum has looked the other way. Their stories are chillingly similar:
Nyar Akec, a 35-year-old mother of four, lost three of her children in the raid on Makuei village. She has been in bondage for four years, most recently in the house of a man named Ali, who beat her if she got sick and used her as a concubine. She has no idea who is the father of her year-old son, Achol. Given her age, she was not forced to be circumcised.
Nyanut Kilo, an 18-year-old woman, was not so fortunate. She was circumcised, without anesthesia, soon after her arrival. She has been kept in the forest in Ayei, where her duties were to pound grain and gather firewood. She was beaten often, especially when she had trouble reading the Koran. As she speaks, she nurses her 7-month-old son, Yai. Her 4-year-old son, Garahm, remains captive.
Bak Madouk, a 13-year-old boy, stands quietly. He speaks only Arabic, having never learned the native language of his Dinka mother. She remains a captive. His father was killed in the raid. There are scars on his head and shoulders.
All three are free now. Their freedom, and that of more than 6,000 other slaves, has been purchased in the past three months by a modern Underground Railroad sponsored by the Swiss-based human rights group Christian Solidarity International, or CSI. The price of each ''redeemed'' slave is roughly equivalent to the local price of a goat or two.
I am here, in this land that time has forgotten, to help with the redemption. I am amazed by what I see and hear. This journey got its start two years ago when one of my parishioners, Martha Rice Townley, pressed me to get involved on this issue of slavery in Sudan. How dare she, a suburban white female, assume that I, an inner city black pastor, could use any of our limited resources on an African issue so far away? How possibly could I make a difference? ''Let's just send a check and pray,'' I suggested.
But she persisted and, along with Charles Jacobs of the American Anti-Slavery Group, persuaded me to allow Francis Bok, a young Sudanese man who was enslaved at age 7 and who now lives in Boston, to tell his story to the congregation one Sunday. Despite his limited English, Francis captivated us with his gripping story of deliverance. We have never been the same.
Our trip to this, Africa's largest and poorest country, begins on the July 4 holiday, while my country celebrated its independence. The irony is not lost on our group, which included myself, two other local clergy members - the Rev. Raymond Hammond and the Rev. Gloria Hammond - and Jay Williams, a Harvard student activist against slavery, and television anchor Liz Walker, who is headed to Harvard Divinity School this fall.
I quickly learn that the cause and the motive for the slavery are extremely complex. It is the outgrowth of an internal conflict, an 18 year civil war, that pits Arab against African, North against South, government forces against the rebels in the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army. It is a border war between Baggara Arabs and Dinka over land rights. It is, some say, about rights to the oil that lies beneath South Sudan; the civil war clears the south of its inhabitants, leaving the region's vast untapped oil resources for outsiders to exploit.
As is so often the case, culture and religion undergird the conflict. The Islamic fundamentalist regime in Khartoum is trying to impose its radical version of Koranic law on the Dinka people, and it has been met with fierce resistance. Dinka principles and norms are more easily identified with modern Christianity. The Dinka instinctively resist coerced religion.
The price of resistance: bondage for those captured during raids on their villages. They are marched to the farms and cattle ranches of their new masters in the north. Interviews with 51 of the women freed most recently confirm that almost all were raped; half were gang-raped. One in six was subjected to female genital mutilation. All were Christian or adherents of a tribal faith.
The enslavement has been going on for years, and an estimated 200,000 black women and children remain captive in northern Sudan. Another 54,000 have been freed by CSI since 1995.
For those who escape, the first step toward freedom comes, oddly, at the hands of men known as Arab slave retrievers. Working in small networks and in association with black Sudanese community leaders, they deliver groups of slaves (usually numbering several hundred) from bondage in the north to CSI representatives, as part of a negotiated exchange.
It was at this juncture that we arrived on the scene. I came here as a descendant of African slaves, and the initial sight of slaves sitting under a tree waiting to be set free was for me indescribably emotional. I wept deeply inside, and cried silent tears on the outside. A colleague, Peter Ring of the Sudan Council of Churches, admonished me to contain my emotions.
But it is hard to do so as one watches the transition to freedom. After anopening speech by John Eibner (who, along with Gunnar Wiebalck, represented CSI), the names of the about-to-be-freed slaves are verified, checked against those on the redemption list drawn up earlier. On the day we visited, the Hammonds and I were allowed to address the group.
Then began a process that has been repeated, with Swiss precision, innumerable times: First, the slaves' photos were taken, and they were fingerprinted. Then, the Arab retrievers were paid, from bundles of money (in the form of Sudanese pounds) stuffed into a large duffel bag. Finally, after a closing speech by Eibner, the slaves were set free.
Their reaction? Some were happy and danced with joy. Others just walked away quietly. Many - primarily the children - were preoccupied with the visiting Americans. We looked at one another and smiled, each trying to somehow assess (like lost relatives) what we had in common.
During my stay, my emotions ran the gamut from being overwrought to being overjoyed. Although I was never at peace, I always felt welcomed. It was an honor to be a part of the homecoming celebration of the return of Aldo Ajou Deng, a former deputy prime minister who spent the last 12 years in exile in London. He is a towering man (his sons and daughter play US college basketball) who commands respect. He is also the consummate politician, lobbying me on behalf of a peace agreement proposed by the Nairobi-based Inter Governmental Authority for Development.
Over the days of my stay, it became very easy to defend the cause for which I went to Sudan, to counter those who say the buy-back program only encourages enslavement for ransom. It does not. If buying back slaves prompted more murderous raids on villages, surely the village chiefs would not let us do it. Instead, they beg us to free their people. And to those who ask me,''What happens if the freed slaves are captured again?'' I say, ''Why concern ourselves about tomorrow if we can relieve the suffering of one woman or one child today?''
In the cool evening breeze I ponder: Why has the world turned a deaf ear to the suffering of these women and children? If the world can care about the raped white women of Kosovo, why not Sudan's enslaved women and children? Is there no strategic benefit to America from this region of the world?
The violence in Sudan is escalating. On June 2, the forces in the south captured a government garrison at Raga; in response, Sudan's president, General Omar Bashir, stepped up what he calls the jihad, or holy war, against the black, non-Muslim community. By some accounts, Libya is helping him.
With that increasing violence as a backdrop, the US Congress on June 13
backed a peace plan that human rights groups are campaigning for. The
legislation would, if passed, deny companies that finance Sudan's ''holy
war'' access to US capital markets. The Bush administration has, like those before it, condemned the regime in Khartoum for atrocities committed in its war on the south. That, like international outcry, seems to have had little
effect.
It will require something more to stop the violence that has killed 2 million Sudanese, and displaced 4 million others since the current civil war began in 1983.
But there is hope to be found in this rugged, fertile land. It is evident in the songs of the children, recently freed, as they sing and dance along the dirt-packed air strip.
I saw thousands of children and only one toy. It was a truck cut out of a tin can with wheels and a string. As the boy pulled his toy and the other children laughed, I smiled with relief in knowing that I was a small part of relieving the pain, suffering, and bondage of an innocent child.
This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 8/12/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
Copyright 2001 Johnson Publishing Company, Inc.
Ebony
August, 2001
SECTION: AFRICA; Pg. 37
LENGTH: 1460 words
HEADLINE: THE TRUTH ABOUT SLAVERY IN SUDAN
BYLINE: By Kimberly Davis
HIGHLIGHT:
African-American leaders mobilize to help
BODY:
SOME say it's genocide, others say it's religious persecution, still others say it's all about money and oil.
Whatever it's about, the reported existence of the buying and selling of human beings in Sudan -- Africa's largest and poorest country -- in the 21st century has triggered an international furor and is fueling a mushrooming movement of protest by African-American leaders and celebrities.
According to reports, thousands of Sudanese Blacks are being sold for from $ 10 to $ 100, and villages and communities in southern Sudan are being plundered.
For Sudanese who say they've escaped slavery and for African-Americans who have visited that country and say they've talked to newly freed slaves, the stories are of raids in villages and marketplaces in the Bahr el-Ghazal region, of the capture and enslavement of women and children and the murder of male villagers.
The raids, while not carried out directly by the Sudanese government, are reportedly sponsored and sanctioned by government officials or their surrogates.
The Sudanese government has continually denied claims of slavery. Government and diplomatic officials insist that it is illegal abduction as a result of tribal conflicts and as casualties of a long-running civil war.
Several Black leaders, including Rep. Donald M. Payne, D-N.J., the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Rev. Walter E. Fauntroy and activist Joe Madison, have visited Sudan to investigate firsthand the reported human rights violations there. Other leaders, such as Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., are working on Capitol Hill to get to the heart of the matter.
"We are going to be extremely vocal about this," Rev. Sharpton, president and founder of the Harlem-based National Action Network, told a press conference. "There is no way that we, the descendants of slaves, are going to sit by quietly while slavery is being conducted in the same homeland our forefathers came from."
The reported enslavement of thousands of south Sudanese Blacks isn't an effort to build an economic system on the backs of a race of people, African-American leaders say. That's just a smoke-screen for another agenda: The forced displacement of millions of southern Sudanese solely for the sake of money and oil -- an effort to divide, conquer, and tap that region's natural resources without paying its inhabitants for it.
Sudan is a "classic example" of using racism and religion as an excuse for the "exploitation of Africans" by foreign interests, says Rev. Fauntroy, president of the National Black Leadership Roundtable in Washington, D.C.
"For 20 years I was on the banking committee and chair of the committee on international development, finance, trade and monetary policy," says Rev. Fauntroy, a former U.S. congressman and cofounder of the Congressional Black Caucus. "And I know, therefore, that slavery in Sudan is about oil money -- clear and simple."
In recent years, several oil companies from more prosperous nations, including Canada and China, have discovered vast untapped oil reserves and water resources in Sudan's southern region. Now that international economic interests have focused there, with revenues of at least $ 500 million a year at stake, the scramble for control of that region has only intensified.
As a result, the slavery debate is complicated by international economic and political interests, as well as ancient religious controversies.
Since the second civil war between the mostly Arab-Muslim north and Christian south began in 1983, roughly 2 million Sudanese have died and more than 4 million southern Sudanese displaced out of a population of about 35 million. That says nothing of the 3 million people that the U.N.'s World Food Program says will face hunger or starvation.
The United Nations has received reports of human rights abuses by the National Islamic Front (and the legal National Congress) in the capital of Khartoum, and by the rebels, the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army, operating out of the south.
The reported violations receiving the most attention are the forced enslavement of Blacks, primarily members of the Dinka tribe, in the south.
"I went and it was just overwhelming," says civil rights activist Madison, a radio personality from Washington, D.C. "Here you are in the middle cf Sudan, it's about a 110 degrees and all of a sudden you start hearing these murmurs, and then you come into a clearing outside a village and under this huge mahogany tree are 800 women and children, waiting to be redeemed, and in essence, set free."
Both Madison and Rev. Fauntroy visited the war-torn country in April with the help of Christian Solidarity International, a Swiss organization that "buys back" slaves to give them their freedom and supplies emergency food and medicine to the country ravaged by famine and political destablization.
Those who support current President Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir (including some African-American Muslim leaders) also say, and some African-Americans agree, that the reports of slavery and human rights abuses are attempts to discredit the Islamic faith, which most of the population practices.
In contrast, Francis Bok, a 22-year-old from Sudan currently living in Boston, says he was severely beaten, made to sleep outside with the animals and repeatedly ridiculed with the term, "abid," by the slave master and his family. The word means "slave" in Arabic.
"We want to tell the world to take action and try to stop slavery and genocide in Sudan, because the world has been silent for so many years," says Bok, who works with the American Anti-Slavery Group in Boston.
Until recently, the American response has been muted at best, with some officials calling for an end to the civil war, while continuing to allow the importation of gum arabic, a sweetener used in many products such as soft drinks, and while sanctioning the Sudan government for harboring terrorists, but not calling for an end to reported human rights violations.
"I understand, politically, why our government is being so careful with its words and isn't responding," says Jay Williams, 20, a Harvard University junior who went to Sudan last year and who reportedly helped free 4,435 slaves. "But on a human level and on a moral level, I don't understand how our leaders can continue to deny what's going on . . . "
Now, a group of African-Americans and others across the political plane have begun protesting and pressing the Bush administration to take a tougher line in dealing with the controversy.
Madison and Rev. Fauntroy were arrested during a recent protest on the steps of the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C. After they secured famed attorney Johnnie Cochran and former independent counsel Kenneth Starr to handle their defense and gained a lot of publicity in the meantime, the charges were dropped.
Rep. Payne, the ranking member on the House Subcommittee on Africa, has been trying to bring light to the human rights abuses in Sudan for years, and has made several trips to that country.
Congress later moved to condemn "human rights abuses" committed during Sudan's 18-year civil war and "punish" foreign companies engaged in oil and gas production in the north African nation.
To the consternation of some analysts, the House, in an overwhelming vote, decisively intervened on the side of anti-government forces by authorizing $ 10 million to the rebels in the south.
"The good news is that people are focusing on [Sudan] . . . ," Payne says. "It's not about religion, per se. Sudan can exist, with people of Islamic faith and Christians, like anywhere else, if the government is one of reconciliation."
Rep. McKinney says that the United States and its political and civil rights leaders must "attack the entire system . . . that supports lifestyles that are built on the degradation" of human beings.
"We have failed in too many instances to encourage our companies and the corporations of our allies to back away from situations in which their activities contribute to human rights abuse . . . ," McKinney says. "The double standards exist in U.S. foreign policy toward certain countries that give blind support no matter their transgressions. And I'm particularly concerned when those transgressions are supported by the United States and result in Black-on-Black infliction of misery."
Despite the complexities and the conflicting reports, activists like Rev. Sharpton say African-Americans cannot ignore this threat. After visiting Sudan, he conferred with State Department officials and called for a national human rights movement in this century to stop slavery.
"It is incumbent upon us," he said at a press conference, "to make this issue one of global proportions that cannot be ignored."
Sudan Human Rights Organization [SHRO]-CAIRO REPORT ON SLAVERY IN THE SUDAN May-June, 1999
INTRODUCTION
The following report is the most recent fact-finding investigation ever conducted in Bahr Al-Ghazal Region on acts of slavery against the Dinka People of The Sudan at these closing years of the 20th century. Accompanied with groups representing the CSI and Canadian t.v. and press specialists, SHRO-Cairo officials, Mr Abedon Agaw and Dr Hamoada Fathelrahman, produced to the whole world this highly verified document on the shameless and most savage acts of extrajudicial killing, enslavement of humans, rape of women, and abuses of children that will certainly shutter all readers in every part of the planet.
As SHRO-Cairo authenticated report clearly informs, the acts of these savage practices are directly planned and carried to the maximum by the existing Government of The Sudan whose army, PDFs, and recruits are actively involved in enslavement of the Dinka and criminal appropriation of their property. The whole world must immediately launch an international campaign to force this government to abandon all acts of slavery, prosecute the wrong-doers, and protect the lives and property of the Dinka citizens of Sudan in the Bahr al-Ghazal Region as a very urgent and top-priority agenda.
It is high time that all United Nations treaty-bodies and specialized agencies collaborate with Sudan Friends from all nations, human rights organizations, Arab, African, Islamic, and Christian entities in a comprehensive plan to save the People of Sudan, in general, and the Dinka citizens of Sudan, in particular, from all acts of slavery and genocide.
SHRO-Cairo is grateful to the Sudanese citizens in Bahr al-Ghazal Region, especially the Sultans, Chiefs, women, and children of the Dinka people, and all of the other citizens in the Region whose cooperation brought about the facts investigated in this report. Special thanks are expressed to the CSI and the Canadian specialists who collaborated with SHRO-Cairo to uncover the serious situation our People are made to face in Bahr al-Ghazal.
Mahgoub El-Tigani President, SHRO-Cairo June 10, 1999
THE REPORT
The Sudan Human Rights Organization (SHRO-Cairo) Deputy President, Mr Abedon Agaw, and Secretary-General, Dr Hamoada Fathelrahman, visited the Bahr al-Ghazal Region in Southern Sudan between the 17th and 22nd of May 1999 to explore the situation of human rights and to investigate accusations of acts of slavery in the Region.
SHRO-Cairo officers were accompanied with a group representing the Christian Solidarity International (CSI) and Canadian T.V. and Press. The Organization conducted many interviews with parties directly involved in slavery. These included citizens formerly enslaved, businessmen who participated in the family unions of these citizens, Suatans and Chiefs of the Region, officials of native administration, natives and members of families, citizens of the Arab inhabitants of the Region, and merchants from the North.
HRO-Cairo was particularly interested in information it managed to collect directly from children and appropriately documented. The Organization concludes in the following facts:-
- Slavery is an old-centuries phenomenon which has been closely related with tribal feuds in the Region. Nonetheless, slavery became an issue of increasing concern as it has been largely expanded under the existing regime whose authorities are directly involved in slavery by both organizational and supervisory activities. The authorities recruited a number of Al-Misairiya and Al-Rizaygat people as part of the Popular Defense Forces (PDFs). Each conscript is provided with a hourse, a machine gun, and 50,000 pounds to raid the villages suspected by authorities as supporters of the SPLM/SPLA. The raiders are allowed to keep whoever is taken captive from the victimized citizens, in addition to cattle and other property as booty and loot of the regime’s Holy War of Jihad.
- The authorities locate the villages and rural districts as targets for raiding to deprive SPLM/SPLA from peoples’ support and terrorize the inhabitants who are further frustrated and compelled to abandon their land by the burning of their homes. The exercise of loot-and-burn tactics as implemented by village-raiding and air bombardment has actually translated the policies of the authorities to systematic acts of genocide.
- The Marahil, the name of aggressors according to the natives, include the conscripts in question, members of the PDFs, and members of the Sudanese Armed Forces. The citizens enslaved, their cattle, and other property whether captured by the three partners or individually are susequently moved to areas within the full jurisdiction of Sudanese authorities.
- The enslaved citizens are incarcerated with the other possessions in special areas under custody of disciplinary forces (the Army or the PDFs). These are places located at a walking distance of 5 to 7 hours from the invaded areas. In a later stage, the enslaved citizens are moved to al-Muglad and al-Mayram via voyages that take 6 to 9 days of travel. During these voyages, a large number of men with tightened hands and feet are beaten up on their heads with heavy sticks to death. Many youngsters are reserved for conscription, and the women are repeatedly raped by guards and men responsible for their movement. Every 9 or 10 citizens are tied together by a long rope.
- The enslaved citizens are sold to new masters who use the women without pay for farming, grazing, carrying water from wells to home, grounding sorghum, and performing sexual services to the satisfaction of slave-masters. The status of enslaved women is not changed even if they give birth to children. Their children are never treated in a way equal to childrern of the master’s wives. The enslaved women and children are mostly renamed with Arabic names.
- The children are used for grazing, child care, and other domestic services in the market. The enslaved people are not allowed to mix up with each other. They sleep away from the master’s family, most likely in the barn of animals or stores of the master.
- Some of the enslaved women are circumcised by midwives to be “clean” or to prepare them as concubines as a master’s wife may wish. This same woman usually supervises over the circumcision process without any use of medical drugs. After circumcision, the enslaved woman suffers a strong bleeding. However, the sick woman is not permitted to rest from work after circumcision. All circumcised women are forced to work in the next day.
- Some enslaved citizens are resold to new masters in other cities of The Sudan to be used in grazing of Al-Kababish herds or for the private service of the master without pay. Some are sold in Khartoum, the Capital of Sudan, or in al-Diain town.
- The efforts to free enslaved people used to take place in the past in accordance with agreements between Dinka and Arabs. The Dinka would pay one cow for an enslaved person. Because the Dinka cattle was gravely lost as a result of the civil war looting and the increase in the number of enslaved citizens, organizations such as the Christian Solidarity International (CSI) intervened to help freeing the enslaved people. The CSI pays US for every person saved from enslavement.
- The reunion of the enslaved citizens with their families is mediated by merchants of the Misairiya and Rizaygat people. These businessmen collect the enslaved persons from Arab Chiefs who buy them from masters and deliver them to the mediating merchants. The merchants smuggle the enslaved citizens to the Dinka Sultan or Chiefs. The merchants keep receipts indicating the number of persons surrendered in order to collect the required ransom.
- The Dinka Sultan or Chiefs announce the names of the emancipated persons. A person’s family will only restore the enslaved member if they bring the required cow to the Chiefs who continue, in fact, to take care of the person until the cows are surrendered to the mediating merchants. While kept under custody of the Sultan or Chief, families of the delivered citizens are allowed to visit them.
- The mediating merchants are considered trustworthy by both Dinka and Arab Chiefs who commit themselves to abide by their own agreements concerning the migration of Arabs into the Southern lands with their cattle in the drought seasons or the agreements on the freedom and protection of business. These treaties are based on society’s cooperation apart from any political or administrative influences.
- Each merchant brings about the enslaved citizens as might have been earlier collected. The names are checked and ascertained according to the list provided by the Dinka Sultan or Chiefs. The dollars are received and the enslaved people are announced free citizens to join their families once again.
- The Dinka/Arab agreements, which are strongly supported by Al-Misairiya and Al-Rizaygat people, do not include all Arabs in the Region. The authorities make unrelenting attempts to move Arabs against the agreements. Some are recruited to take part in the raiding of the Dinka villages and rural areas.
- There is no reliable evidence that the purpose of enslavement is Islamization or Arabization. The masters who buy the enslaved citizens are concerned for the services they freely obtain without pay. If a master is interested in teaching Islam to an enslaved person, this is usually restricted to a great extent. Masters have no concern for Islamic education to the enslaved ones. This is limited to Arab names, circumcision, and Khalwa (religious school) education. This does not mean that the authorities do not abuse Islamic conceptions to continue slave-raiding activities or to recruit Arabs to fight the Dinka in the name of the Holy War of Jihad.
- The children born for masters of enslaved women are called Arab names. In some instances, they are degraded with epithets such as “al-Abeed” (the men slaves), “al-Ibaida (the woman slave), or al-Shiramita (the harlot). The fathers of the children ignore them for good. Contrarily, the Dinka continue to think of these children as Dinka children who ares ubsequently related to husbands of the women or they may be renamed with the name of the Sultan or master of the homestead. They are treated as Dinka people in origin.
- The Dinka, natives and Sultans, believe that the restoration of enslaved citizens to the status of free citizens in this way is highly required. They feel grateful for those who free their people or support them. The alternative is unabated acts of slavery, slave-masters abuses, and a continuous failure to stop air and slave raids.
Air Raids:
While interviewing people of the Region, SHRO-Cairo Deputy President and the Secretary-General saw remnants of the air bombardments that became part of society’s awareness. Listening to the voices of flying aircrafts, the natives can easily differentiate reconnaissance planes from relief and bombardment fighters. Furthermore, they prepared ditches around their homes to protect their families from air raids. In Saturday the 15th of May, natives reported that the Sudanese authorities threw some relief aid by air. However, in Sunday the 16th of May, they bombarded the area with Antinov. Owen Atim Achor, a girl aged 9 years and 4 of her cows were killed, and Ring Deng Kair was hurt. The Antinov used 61 bombs in that raid. The natives’ homes were saved, nonethless, because the bombing came in a line parallel to their location.
The authorities use primitive bombs to bombard the villages. These are loaded with nails and pieces of iron that spread in a range of one kilometer thus causing serious damage. Luckily, the bombing is processed from high distances thus the range of destruction is small. Bahr al-Ghazal was bombarded several times in January, February 11th, and the last days of April 1999. It was bombarded 3 times when we were visiting the Region in May. The Sudanese authorities aim to intimidate the citizens, evacuate the Region from inhabitants, and stop relief aid. All this is certainly a genocide of civilians and their property.
Conclusions and Recommendations:
- SHRO-Cairo is firmly convinced that acts of slavery are widely practiced with direct support and enforcement by Sudanese authorities. Slavery is correlated with the concept of Holy War of Jihad as the authority believes.
- The process of freeing enslaved people is a popular operation that is founded on popular efforts and acceptance of citizens as the only solution available in the present time, until air raids are completely stopped, citizens are fully protected, and the authority is forced to abandon the ongoing policies.
- The raids are undertaken by a mixure of Misairiya and Rizaygat peoples. The Misairiya attack the Gogriyal area and the Rizaygat attack Awil. The raiders comprised a small section of Misairiya and Rizaygat. The majority of Misairiya and Rizaygat reject these practices and do resist them in many ways. But these good efforts are in need of further support.
- In this visit alone, 1387 enslaved citizes were made free. It was ascertained that a large number of people are still suffering enslavement. It is possible to save them the shame of slavery.
- SHRO-Cairo condemns in the strongest terms Sudan Government’s involvement in acts of slavery and brigandage, the random air bombing, and the operations that aim to eradicate the Dinka People through acts of genocide and the denial of their right to peace and development.
- The Organization calls upon all organizations, governments, and institutions to take immediate measures to stop all acts of slavery and genocide. The Organization calls in particular upon the Arab and Islamic World to condemn these shameless practices against the fame of Arabs and Muslims, practices that only speak for those who practice or support them.
- SHRO-Cairo calls upon the United Nations bodies, the Arab League, and Organization of African Unity to make fact-finding committees to investigate the facts discovered beyond any doubt in this report. The Organization calls for the publication of these investigations and others in a wide scale in order to combat these horrific deeds.
- SHRO-Cairo calls for the implementation of the recommendations included in the Report of the Special Rapporteur to Session 55 of the UN Commission on Human Rights as indicated in Resolution E/CN.4/1999/38, pages 60-61.
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