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Publication: Zenit.org
Date: March 17, 2001
Islamic Government´s Atrocities
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With an estimated 2 million deaths,
the civil war in Sudan is by far the bloodiest in Africa's recent history.
In spite of repeated condemnations by other nations and human rights groups,
the Islamic government in Khartoum shows no sign of lessening its brutal
conduct.
Khartoum's attacks on villagers
in the separatist south have reduced them to a primitive level of subsistence,
without electricity or modern agricultural methods, according to a March
9 report in The Globe and Mail newspaper. The article quotes Roger Winter,
executive director of the U.S. Committee for Refugees in Washington, saying,
"I would argue that there's a genocide going on."
In 1989 a military coup overthrew
Sudan's democratically elected government and brought to power Lieutenant
General Omar el-Bashir and his National Salvation Revolution Command Council.
Shortly afterward, the constitution was suspended and press freedom abolished.
In December, el-Bashir was elected
to another five-year term, but all major opposition parties boycotted the
elections, and there were allegations of electoral fraud. El-Bashir's party,
the National Congress/National Islamic Front, won 340 out of 360 seats
in Parliament.
The civil war continues into its
18th year. The fighting is partly about religion. The Arab-dominated Islamic
fundamentalist government in Sudan's north has declared a jihad against
the south, which is dominated by animists and Christians.
The principal insurgent group in
the south is the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, the political wing
of the Sudan People's Liberation Army. Neither the Islamic north nor the
non-Islamic south has been able to win the war, even though oil revenues
have enabled government forces to buy more weapons. All attempts to negotiate
an end to the conflict have failed.
Trampling human rights
Numerous human rights organizations
have publicized the Sudan government's lack of respect for individual freedoms
and religious liberty. Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom condemns
the government as "the only one in the world today engaged in chattel slavery,
as documented by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Sudan and the
U.S. State Department."
Freedom House also accuses the military
forces of repeatedly bombing and burning hospitals, refugee camps, churches
and other civilian targets. As well, by manipulating foreign food aid,
the government brought 2.6 million southern Sudanese to the brink of starvation
in 1998. About 100,000 people in fact died of hunger.
Other abuses include burning and
raiding southern villages, followed by "enslaving and raping thousands
of women and children, kidnapping and forcibly converting Christian boys."
Freedom House also accuses the Sudanese government of maltreating Christians,
including clergy, who have been "imprisoned, flogged, tortured and assassinated
for their faith."
In its 2001 report on human rights,
the organization Human Rights Watch confirms these charges. The report
describes Sudan's government as "a gross human rights abuser," while at
the same time recognizing that "rebel groups committed their share of violations."
International Christian Concern
is also protesting the situation in Sudan. It describes how in many cases
the northern military forces follow a scorched-earth policy. Areas are
sealed off by road and air, and government forces are often sent in to
"depopulate" the region. People and livestock are taken or killed, and
buildings are destroyed. Survivors are then forcibly relocated to "peace
camps," where the young are taken away from their parents and sent to other
camps for indoctrination by Islamic fundamentalists.
International Christian Concern
has also published a report on how Sudan is using oil revenues to sustain
its military campaign. In these efforts Sudan is being supported by its
overseas partners. The government-approved oil consortium, the Greater
Nile Petroleum Operating Company, is made up of the following partners:
China National Petroleum Corporation (40% partner), Petronas, a Malaysian
state-owned company (30% partner), Talisman Energy, a private Canadian
company (25% partner) and Suda-Pet, a state-owned Sudanese company (5%
partner).
Talisman is a signatory to the International
Code of Ethics for Canadian Businesses, according to International Christian
Concern. But investigations ordered by Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd
Axworthy suggest that an airstrip associated with Talisman's operations
in Sudan has been used by the country's military forces.
Helicopter gunships and Antonov
bombers have used Talisman's airstrip on their way to bombing raids in
southern Sudan. International Christian Concern estimated that last year
the government used such Antonov aircraft to bomb 113 civilian targets,
including hospitals, churches, schools and relief agencies.
Another organization, Christian
Aid, in a report published Thursday, added its voice to those who denounce
how foreign oil companies are subsidizing the war machine of the Sudanese
regime.
Recent developments
There are signs, however, that internal
divisions are weakening the northern Islamic government. Hassan Turabi,
"the Sorbonne-educated éminence grise of radical Islam in Sudan,"
is now in prison after his arrest several weeks ago for signing a memorandum
of understanding with rebels in the south, the Telegraph newspaper reported
March 7.
But the infighting may not bring
much immediate relief to the conflict. The Telegraph affirmed that in the
last three months alone, 20,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in
the conflict. And government forces have launched new offensives to cordon
off the southern oil reserves.
In the meantime the United Nations
has sent a human rights investigator to Sudan, Gerhart Baum. Baum met the
prominent human rights activist, Ghazi Suleiman, of the Sudanese Group
for Human Rights, according to a BBC report March 11.
Some hope that new U.S. President
George W. Bush will take up the cause of Sudan. The Associated Press on
March 9 reported that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told a congressional
panel, "There is perhaps no greater tragedy on the face of the earth today
than the tragedy that is unfolding in the Sudan."
On March 11 the Washington Post
noted that U.S. Senator Bill Frist, who is "Bush's main man in the Senate
and sees the president all the time," has firsthand experience of the situation
in Sudan, having gone into zones prohibited by the government. Another
influential Republican senator, Sam Brownback, is also highly critical
of Sudan and is pushing the administration to work on stopping the war.
The Post reported that Brownback "has exhorted churchgoers in his home
state to join the cause of Christians who are oppressed by the militantly
Muslim government in Khartoum."
Some gains have been made recently.
The U.N. Children's Fund announced it had airlifted more than 2,800 demobilized
child soldiers away from the front lines in southern Sudan, according to
a Feb. 28 Reuters report.
Rebels in southern Sudan handed
the former child-soldiers, aged 8 to 18, over to the United Nations, which
will now try to trace their families. The five-day secret airlift from
the combat zone followed a pledge last October by the leader of the Sudan
People's Liberation Army to Carol Bellamy, executive director of UNICEF,
to demobilize all his child-soldiers.
Whether pressure comes from the
United Nations, the United States, or other governments, the conflict in
Sudan sorely needs to end quickly.