Diamondheart is Sudan a Muslem State, then explaine this?Slave Trade Thrives in Sudan
Arab Masters Can Do as They Please
By KARIN DAVIES
MADHOL, Sudan (AP) - Stacks of money pass from the Christian
foreigner to the Muslim trader, an exchange anxiously watched by a 13-
year-old girl with diamonds of sweat on her brow.
The Sudanese trader, his lap buried by currency worth $13,200, waves
carelessly to free his merchandise - 132 slaves.
Akuac Malong, the young Dinka girl, is among them. She has spent
seven years - more than half her life - enslaved by an Arab in northern
Sudan.
Her brilliant smile belies the beatings, near-starvation, mutilation and
attempted brainwashing she endured. ``I thought it would be better to die
than to remain a slave,'' Akuac says.
Trafficking in humans has resurged with civil war in Africa's largest and
poorest country, said John Eibner of Christian Solidarity International, a
humanitarian group that bought Akuac's freedom.
For all but a decade since Sudan's independence in 1956, southern
rebels, mainly black Christians and followers of tribal religions, have
fought for autonomy from the national government in Khartoum, which is
dominated by northern Arabs. The southerners believe the north is trying
to impose Islam and the Arabic language and to monopolize Sudan's
wealth.
Since the rebellion resumed 14 years ago, fighting, famine and disease
have killed an estimated 1.5 million Sudanese - more than died in the
genocides and civil wars in Rwanda or Bosnia. More than 3 million
people have fled or been forced from their homes.
Much of the fighting on the government side is done by local militias.
Unpaid, their bounty is as old as war itself - slaves. Sudan's radical Islamic
leaders encourage soldiers to take slaves as their compensation, according
United Nations investigators and the U.S. State Department.
Young women and children are the most valuable war booty. Eibner
said old people are beaten and robbed while young men are killed because
they cannot be trained into useful, harmless slaves.
``According to the Khartoum's regime ideology of jihad, members of
this resistant black African community - be they men, women or children -
are infidels, and may be arbitrarily killed, enslaved, looted or otherwise
abused,'' Eibner said.
The Sudanese government denies condoning slavery, insisting the
practice persists because holding prisoners for ransom is a tradition rooted
in tribal disputes.
No side has a claim on morality in this war. The rebel Sudan People's
Liberation Army has been accused of forcibly inducting teen-age boys into
its ragtag army. But the southern blacks do not take Arab prisoners for
slaves.
Paul Malong Awan, a regional rebel commander, said enslavement is a
government tactic to weaken the morale and military might of the south.
Many of the blacks taken away are Dinkas, a million-member tribe that
is the biggest ethnic group in southern Sudan. Dinkas are vulnerable
because they predominate in northern Bahr el Ghazal, a region that is
close to the front between north and south.
Christian Solidarity International estimates tens of thousands of black
slaves are owned by Arabs in northern Sudan. The Swiss-based charity has
made more than a dozen risky, clandestine bush flights to southern Sudan
to redeem 800 slaves since 1995, most recently in Madhol, 720 miles
southwest of Khartoum.
Some criticize its work
Alex de Waal, of the London-based group African Rights, said that by
paying large sums to free slaves, the Swiss charity undercuts Dinkas living
in the north who do the same secretive work for a fraction of the cost.
Eibner countered: ``There is no evidence to suggest that our work has
undermined efforts to redeem abducted women and children. In fact,
Dinka elders encourage us to press ahead with our activities.''
Gaspar Biro, a researcher for the U.N. Commission on Human Rights
for Sudan, has cited ``an alarming increase'' in ``cases of slavery,
servitude, slave trade and forced labor'' since February 1994.
``The total passivity of the government can only be regarded as tacit
political approval and support of the institution of slavery,'' he said.
A U.S. State Department report said accounts it received on the taking
of slaves in the south ``indicates the direct and general involvement'' of
Sudan's army and militias ``backed by the government.''
The centuries-old tensions between Arabs and blacks in Sudan are
linked to slaving expeditions by Arabs to the upper Nile, a trade that the
19th century explorer David Livingstone called ``an open sore on the
world.''
Akuac's mother, Abuong Malong, sobs when she sees her daughter for
the first time in seven years. ``It's like she's been born again.''
She recognizes her only from her straight, square teeth. ``She was very
small when she was taken, her features have changed, but she came back
with the same spirit.''
Recalling that traumatic day, Mrs. Malong says they were fetching water
when Arab militiamen on camels and horses thundered into their village,
Rumalong. The raiders began shooting at the clusters of mud and wattle
huts and rounding up cows and goats.
``I was running with Akuac for the trees when a horseman grabbed her,''
Mrs. Malong says. ``I was afraid that if I chased the horseman, he would
kill me.''
Akuac and her older brother were tied to horsebacks and taken north
with more than a dozen others from their village, a short walk southeast of
Madhol. The women and older children had to carry the booty of their
captors.
In Kordofan, Akuac was sold to an Arab who made her wash clothes,
haul water, gather firewood and help with cooking.
She survived on table scraps, and slept in the kitchen. ``I was badly
treated,'' Akuac says.
Her master also tried to make her a Muslim - taking her to mosque and
giving her the Arabic name of Fatima.
But Akuac says she maintained her Christian faith, praying and singing
hymns in secret and never forgetting her true name. ``My name is my
name and nobody can change that.''
She does bear scars - in the local Muslim tradition, she was forcibly
circumcised with her master's daughters when she was 11.
``It was very brutal. It is strange to our culture,'' Akuac says. ``The
master told me, `If I don't circumcise you, I will have to kill you because
you will still hold the ideas of your people, and you will try to escape.'''
Her heart is scarred, too. Her older brother, Makol, was killed two years
ago at age 13 while trying to escape.
Another returnee, Akec Kwol Kiir, who is in her 40s, says she was
repeatedly raped by four soldiers who took her north. She ended up in a
camp where slaves were bought and sold. ``They treated us like cattle,''
she says.
Her Arab master insisted that she, too, be circumcised. She refused, and
was brutally slashed. Her ear is notched and her chin and neck scarred.
Kwol finally submitted. ``Otherwise, they would have killed me.
Because I was a slave, they had the right to do whatever they wanted to
me,'' she says.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Simon Deng, Former Sudanese Slave, Human Rights Activist
Submitted by admin on 21 June, 2005 - 13:02. Victims of Jihad 2005 | Sub-Saharan Africa
I wish to open my remarks by expressing my profound gratitude to the International Humanist and Ethical Union, the Association for World Education, and the Association of World Citizens for their invitation to me to address this conference at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. A symposium on “Victims of Jihad” could not be more important or urgent. Let me be very clear: this meeting is addressing the worst evil presently confronting the world. Jihad is on the march across the globe, and the people of the Sudan have experienced its cruelty more than any other group on earth. It is also fitting, if only in the most blackly comic way, that this conference coincides with the meeting of the 61st Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, a body whose purpose is to uphold the rights and dignity of all people, and yet it has among its members some of the most inhumane regimes on earth, among them the genocidal slave jihadists of Khartoum.
I thank you for giving me this opportunity to address you, and not only or primarily on my own behalf, but far more importantly on behalf of my people, the Southern Sudanese victims of Islamization, Arabization and enslavement at the hands of the tiny Arab minority in my country. Through my presence here you have given voice to millions of voiceless victims; you have made the invisible visible; you have helped me break the silence that has surrounded the destruction of my people.
My name is Simon Aban Deng. I am from Sudan. I am a Shiluk by tribe. I am a Christian by religion. I belong to a people who have been subjected to mass murder, slavery, systematic rape, religious persecution, enforced starvation, dislocation, exile. We are the victims of genocide, both physical and cultural. We have been targeted for annihilation as human beings and as members of a culture. These miseries did not fall upon us from the sky; we have been and remain the victims of the radical jihadist regime in Khartoum.
The scale of our losses has been enormous in the two genocides perpetrated by the Islamists – two, not one. Starting in 1955, the year before independence was granted by the British, up until 1973, 1.5 million Southern Sudanese Christians were slaughtered by the Arab/Muslim dominated government in Khartoum. From 1983 until just 3 months ago when a peace treaty was brokered by the United States, we Southern Sudanese lost 2 million more to what Khartoum calls a holy war against the infidels. Yes, I am an infidel according to their definition. I think many of you are as well. We black “infidels” in the South, Christians and other non-Muslims, refused to be ruled by Islam, and we refused to be Arabized.
Our only offense was our determination to remain faithful to our religion and to honor our African cultures. For these “crimes” The National Islamic Front regime has committed genocide against us. Not only has that genocide produced the largest body-count of murdered innocents since the Nazis and the work of Joseph Stalin’s followers, but it has also produced the largest population of refugees anywhere on earth since the Second World War.
I am standing before you today, ladies and gentlemen, a victim of Sudanese Arab enslavement in Sudan. I was a slave. I am not ashamed to say it. When I was nine year’s old, my village was raided by Arab troops in the pay of Khartoum. As we ran into the bush to escape I watched as childhood friends were shot dead and the old and the weak who were unable to run were burned alive in their huts. I was abducted and given to an Arab family as a “gift.” A “gift,” ladies and gentlemen. When you look at me, do you see a gift? Do I look like an object or a commodity? I am a human being, a person created in the image of God, a simple truth the jihadists did not and can not recognize.
As a child, I lived as a slave for several years. I was beaten time and time again for no reason at all – even the whim of my “master’s” children could produce these beatings. I was subjected to harsh labor and indignities of every sort. A beloved child in my own loving family, I had to become accustomed to sleeping next to the animals and to clean the ground where I slept. I became accustomed to awakening first in the household to begin my labor, eating the leftovers from the plates of my “master’s” and going to sleep last – only after every bit of heavy work had been performed. I will not dwell on this time in my life. I speak of it because you need to understand that if you take my experience as a child slave and multiply hundreds of thousands of times only then can you begin to understand the nightmare of the African peoples of Sudan at the hands of the jihadists.
While the life of a slave is like hell, there is no shame in being a slave; it is not a choice. There is only shame in being a “master.” If any one is to feel shame for the suffering of the people of the Sudan who have lost 3.5 million lives at the hands of a barbarous regime, it is the radical Muslims in Khartoum and their Islamist allies throughout Sudan and across the whole of the Islamic world.
It is important to bear in mind that by definition the African Christians of the Southern Sudan are the victims of jihad Islamism. The war against us (I should add that the word “war” is misleading because it has not been conventional war we have experienced but a genocidal war of extinction) has been and is being conducted in the name of jihad. According to the murderers, rapists and slavers – they are engaged in a holy war in the name of Allah. The Sudanese jihadists have a simple-minded, cruel, binary worldview. If you are not a Muslim you are a khoufar, an infidel, an enemy, a human being with no right to life who may be treated with terrible inhumanity. The jihadists in Khartoum have a great challenge in Sudan, the Land of the Blacks. Those Arabs and Sudanese who have chosen to be culturally Arab are so comparatively few – and the blacks are so many. Still, they have done their work with great efficiency. They have been well-armed by their friends in the Arab world. They committed genocide against us in the South and they got away with it: the world simply looked away. Now they have turned their attention west, to Darfur. Some are watching; most are not.
When millions of African blacks were being slaughtered and hundreds of thousands of Southern Sudanese children were and are being enslaved, the world was indifferent. Perhaps worst of all – the UN turned its back.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are very painful questions which must be asked, and I will ask them. How long will mass murder, slavery, religious persecution, systematic rape, enforced starvation, and “ethnic and religious cleansing” be allowed to go on? When will those with the power to act to stop these crimes stand up and say enough is enough?
Not long ago – only yesterday in historical terms – after the Nazis slaughtered millions of innocent Jews, the UN was created. At that time, standing on the ashes of the victims of Auschwitz and the other places of torture and mass-murder, the world said, “Never Again.” The words seemed to mean something at that time; they seemed filled with purpose and power. It appeared as though a brave new world was coming into being in which such atrocious evil would never again be permitted by civilized nations. When Pol Pot slaughtered his own people in Cambodia we returned to that phrase and once more said, “Never again.” But in Sudan, when 1.5 million were lost in a genocide perpetrated by the Islamists, nobody said anything at all. Then Rwanda came, and even though no one lifted a finger to save the 800,000 so horribly slaughtered, yet again, everybody said “Never Again”. In Sudan, in the second genocide in the South, 2 million were being slaughtered up until two months ago in the name of jihad by the Islamic government in Khartoum. Once more, there was a deathly silence.
When are we going to say “Never Again” with respect to the people of Sudan? And more to the point, when – at long last – will the international community act on the meaning of those words?
But perhaps this is not the right question. I have begun to think that the right question to ask the so-called civilized world is to stop saying “Never Again” since those words carry no meaning. Why bother repeating the phrase when you know in your heart you do not mean it? That is the question I leave you with today. If we live in a world in which simple moral understanding is dead, perhaps we should at least have the decency to speak that truth. Lest us bury the empty words. It is an act of indecency to the victims to permit these words to have lost all meaning. Let us bury them along with the bodies of the innocent.
I ask this question as a victim of enslavement in Sudan; I ask it for my fellow Southern Sudanese who are always asking this question. My voice is their voice. We can not stop wondering why no one cares about our fate, why nobody does anything about it. We have been victimized by the Arabs in the name of the ideology of jihad, but no one seems to care. We have endured and are enduring the most systematic destruction of a people since the Nazi Holocaust, but our fate seems largely invisible to the world.
It is very painful to say this, but we Sudanese victims can not avoid uttering the truth, at least among ourselves: we are black, and therefore nobody cares about us. We are the ultimate victims of a global racism that continues even in the new millennium. We also have the great misfortune to be the victims of Arabs who slaughter and enslave us in the name of jihad. And everyone sitting here surely knows that when it comes to the ideology of jihad, open discourse at the Commission for Human Rights is muted. People refuse to speak the truth because no one wishes to be seen as anti-Islamic, especially not at the UN.
Finally, let me turn to address Muslim believers. Surely you know the enslavement and slaughter of millions of people is evil. Does your religion condone these crimes against humanity? If it does not, why don’t you speak up to condemn these crimes, these sins? The genocide and slavery perpetrated by the government of Khartoum is done in the name of the ideology of jihad. Thus, these crimes appear to be committed, by implication, in your name, in the name of the religion you hold sacred.
If you are silent, I can not help but think you condone these crimes against humanity. If any religion, condones mass murder, slavery, religious persecution, systematic rape, forced starvation, and ethnic cleansing, what can be said about the peaceful, beneficent character of that religion?
I speak with an angry voice because I am a victim. I am a victim of the great evil of slavery. I have witnessed the slaughter of my people – the death of 3.5 million innocent human beings created in the image of God. My enslavement, the murder of my people – these crimes were often committed in the name of jihad. Muslims: if you believe your religion does not condone these crimes against humanity, shouldn’t you collectively say it is wrong here at the UN?
As a child in Southern Sudan, I witnessed my people being slaughtered with my own eyes; I witnessed young girls and women being raped. As you surely know, the rape of black women in Sudan counts for nothing because the Arab regime of Khartoum sends its soldiers in the field to rape and murder because black African infidels are not judged to be entitled to human rights as defined by the international instruments. The ideology of jihad places infidels outside the law. No religious authority or system of justice holds the perpetrators responsible because their crimes are a matter of government policy and are sanctioned by the state religion, a religion that pretends to be universal but that slaughters the “other” without mercy.
In the Sudan I witnessed my people who escaped slaughter in the South become refugees. I assume all of you know how the Khartoum government deals with black African refugees: it denies food to the needy, water to the thirsting. To receive humane treatment as a refugee you must become a Muslim. Thus even the system of relief to needy refugees is part of a process of forced conversion.
There are 2-3 million Southern Sudanese refugees in another part of Sudan where they are treated like dogs; they are not even considered citizens because in Sudan citizenship is based on religion, and only Muslims qualify. The laws relating to citizenship rights place the nation’s black African Christians at the bottom, in legal limbo without status or rights. Muslim men are first-class citizens. The second–class citizens of the Sudan are Arab Muslim men from any other Islamic country, and the third-class citizens are the Arab Muslim women. The infidel Africans of that nation are not considered by jihadists to be full citizens; this despite the fact that nearly 90% of the population is black African.
Let me draw to a close. In conclusion, I repeat the question that never stops troubling me and my fellow Sudanese who have suffered so terribly: how long will the world be silent? How long will the world let my so-called “infidel” people be slaughtered and enslaved in the name of the ideology of jihad? How long will the world silence moral judgment in a pointless effort not to offend the murderers and slavers and the supporters of murder and slavery? Is the sacrifice of ethical principle more important than not offending violent jihadists?
While the world watches on the sidelines, the government of Sudan wages its war of jihad against the black African people of the land, the true indigenous people of Sudan, focusing now on Darfur. Because the world has failed to act decisively millions have died, hundreds of thousands have been enslaved, hundreds of thousands have been raped, and millions more have traveled the painful path of exile. To be silent is to condone. The international community must accept responsibility for every evil that it could end yet chooses not to.
I direct these last words principally to the United Nations. Do you stand for all human rights? Do you stand for all human liberties? Do you care about the dignity of all of the people of the world, including those branded by jihadists as infidels? The questions I have asked are repeated every single day by millions of black Sudanese. Can you answer me?
The failure of the United Nations to guarantee the basic rights of the slaves of Sudan and other black African “infidels” is shameful beyond my ability to express.
Thank you very much.
