Trying to Find Effective Solutions and Compassionate Responses to the Deteriorating Situation with Sudan and South Sudan

A woman walks towards a cave shelter in Bram village in the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan April 28, 2012. Fleeing aerial bombardment by the Sudanese air force thousands of people have abandoned their homes and made make-shift shelters between the rocks and boulders. (Goran Tomasevic / Reuters)

“It is high time the international community realise that Sudan is the real problem and it is time to put strong pressure although the government is obsessed with sanctions. There is actually a need to put powerful and effective sanctions. The African Union should take [the] lead”, said Luka Biong, a senior South Sudanese official.

A UN deadline for Sudan and South Sudan to resume talks on oil and other critical issues looked likely to pass without action on Wednesday, as South Sudan accused Khartoum of stalling. The South’s lead negotiator, Pagun Amum told AFP that Juba has sent a letter to the AU mediator, former South African president Thabo Mbeki, saying “we have been ready to resume talks and we are waiting.”

But according to Pagan, the Sudan and South Sudan could not reach an agreement on their oil relationship. South Sudan was willing to pay a transit fee of $0.69 per barrel to use Sudan’s oil pipelines. Despite the generous sum compared to other international oil agreements, Sudan disagreed, demanding a sum of $36.00 per barrel.

Meanwhile, almost five million people in South Sudan, more than half of the population, face increasingly severe food shortages after their government ceased oil exports in a row with the country’s neighbour, Sudan.

On a bed of sticks in one of the many straw huts in Yida, Younam, a 14-year-old boy, told the story of how his family fled bombings of their village. When his family and other refugees reached Jau, a town on the border with South Sudan, Bashir’s soldiers attacked. Hiding under a tree, Younam witnessed the rampage. “They cut the babies; then the young people,” the boy recalled. “Then they stoned my parents until they died.” Days later, Younam arrived at Yida—naked, hungry, and scared. “I’m worried there is no one who will ever be able to love me like my parents did,” he said, rubbing his eyes to hold back tears.

Adding to the desperate situation, the U.N.’s refugee agency has refused to recognize Yida as a formal refugee camp, setting up two smaller rival camps to the south. Refugees say the other camps are built on swampy, treeless land and that they are unsuitable for living. Refugees, meanwhile, keep pouring into Yida.

It is overwhelming to bear witness to these heart-breaking atrocities and to maintain compassionate responses but let us try to absorb the essence of Ubuntu and realize that what dehumanizes others inexorably dehumanizes us. As an external observer, it is important to be emotionally present and self-aware to be able to find appropriate ways to help those in need.

The Real Hunger Games is in Sudan/South Sudan

Many thousands have been been displaced along the border with South Sudan

“I was running from the sound of the Antonov (aeroplane), carrying my baby, when the bombs dropped and cut my leg,” a civilian, Juad, said.

Sudanese armed forces are continuing to bomb the Nuba Mountains area in response to the rebels fighting them. Sudan has used hunger as a weapon of war, driving people from their farms.

“There is no food, this is what we eat,” Juad said, displaying a tin bowl of chopped leaves and dry seeds.

“Since the war started, the people have been terrified, living in caves. There’s no way to grow anything or graze our cows… nothing is here,” said Ahmed Tia, a local commissioner of Buram county, sitting on a leather office chair under a tree.

The region is too volatile for the international community to supply aid, so no food is coming into the area that way either. Hundreds of refugees per day are embarking on the three- to seven-day journey to get to refugee camps on the other side of the border in South Sudan.The rainy season begins in a few weeks and will last until October, effectively trapping them without any supplies.

The same exact situation is unfolding in Blue Nile state. More than 200,000 people are in dire need and elderly and children are already starting to die. Many people live in caves in the hills to avoid aerial bombing, which happens day and night.

Rebels and Malawi’s leader have zeroed in the main culprit, President al-Bashir. One new rebel group the Sudan Revolutionary Front aims are:

“They want to change the way Sudan is governed, and that means overthrowing Bashir’s Islamist regime in Khartoum. That might seem slightly ridiculous — the idea of this funny little rebel group that no one’s heard of fighting its way to Khartoum. But they seem to be notching up some victories against the northern army.”

They’ve forged alliances with other rebel groups, including rebels from Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile with the goal of representing a united presence of resistance from the eastern to the western border, Tristan McConnell, GlobalPost’s correspondent said.

Malawi’s new President Joyce Banda has said she does not want Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, accused of war crimes, to attend a summit in July.

Despite the pressure, Sudan is continuing its aerial bombing campaigns on innocent civilians. How do we attempt to provide some hope and security to a place that is desperately unsafe?

The Worst We Feared: Sudan and South Sudan at War

SUDAN/SOUTH SUDAN

On Friday Sudan launched a counterattack on South Sudan over the disputed territory of Heglig. Sudanese military spokesman Al Sawarmi Khaled Saad told reporters in Khartoum the army was close to Heglig, and is aiming not just to take over the area but also to destroy South Sudan’s forces in the area. A Unity State government spokesperson in the state capital Bentiu, confirmed the aerial bombings near the border:

“The areas in the north of Unity State are still subject to Antonovs (planes). We don’t have the updates yet between Heglig and Kelet, but all those areas they are subjected to bombing.” – South Sudan Spokesperson, Gideon Gatfan. South Sudan’s military spokesman Philip Aguer told Radio Dabanga that the Sudanese army is still around 30 km from Heglig and said South Sudan is still completely in control of the area.

Calls from Khartoum to mobilize for war in Heglig have reportedly failed amongst the Misseriya in two towns in South Kordofan, El Muglad and Dibab. Witnesses said the Misseriya of the western sector in South Kordofan are not willing to die for the government in a conflict they do not support.

The UN and African Union have unsuccessfully demanded immediate ceasefire, since President Bashir has refused to negotiate with Juba unless they withdraw their forces from Heglig. On the other hand, South Sudan’s lead negotiator, Pagan Amum, said his country was ready to withdraw under a UN-mediated plan.

“On the ground, we are ready to withdraw from Heglig as a contested area … provided that the United Nations deploy a UN force in these contested areas and the UN also establish a monitoring mechanism to monitor the implementation of the cessation of hostilities agreement,” he told reporters.

Sudan has taken it a brutal step further by targeting ethnically Southern Sudanese living in Sudan. Over 5,000 South Sudanese citizens living in a camp in the Sharef area of East Darfur were forced out, looted, and had their homes burned down and destroyed on Monday by a group of Sudanese militia. There have also been a series of rape crimes carried out by militias loyal to the Sudanese government throughout Darfur, targeting displaced girls and women in camps. It is as if there is no end to abuse and violence.

This long-lasting conflict is rooted in major disputes still not settled since South Sudan’s independence in July last year.

“They have no agreement on oil, they have no agreement on their border, they have no agreement on citizenship, they have no agreement on Abyei and indeed these were issues that were meant to be resolved before independence. Also in southern Kordofan and Blue Nile, the popular consultations in the political process which was to incorporate all the people of those regions into the larger Sudan were abandoned.” US ambassador Susan Rice

It might not be as simple as both countries coming to some sort of negotiation and resolution over these pertinent issues, but it would at least be a beginning to light at the end of the vicious tunnel.

Hearing the Cries, Heeding the Cries

Nakivale refugee camp has been home to thousands of Congolese during and since DR Congo's civil war

SUDAN and SOUTH SUDAN

This week’s news offers a small glimpse of hope as the thousands of lives that are being jeopardized in the Nuba region is finally grasping the attention of the international community, government officials, and the media with recent visits by Anne Curry and Nick Kristof.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday accused the Khartoum government of actively trying to undermine the government of South Sudan and suggested that the US is prepared to take measures against Bashir. Her comments came in response to Representative Ed Royce’s (R OC, CA) introduction of a new piece of legislation last week to expand the U.S. State Department’s Rewards for Justice program to include those wanted for the most serious human rights abuses, which includes Bashir’s indictment by the ICC.

The UN Security Council also called on the Sudanese government and the SPLM-N to cooperate fully and ensure that humanitarian assistance is delivered to those suffering from the rising levels of malnutrition and food insecurity. However, as attention is finally turned to these atrocities, attention is not enough, genocide by attrition still continues.

“We are still expecting them, they are still around us and now we don’t sleep in the houses, we are sleeping in the bush. That means the war is still there, no change.” Meluth Kur Jok, an elder who has sought sanctuary in Jonglei’s Akobo town since five close relatives were killed and 80 children abducted in an attack on his home village of Woulang a few weeks ago, told IRIN of his fears of more violence.

An unlikely actor, an American man married to a Nuba woman, Ryan Boyette, is risking his life to collect video of atrocities and has set up a network of local citizen journalists to document the atrocities and starvation in hopes of making the world care enough to intervene. So far the Associated Press, CNN, Fox News and Al-Jazeera have used his videos or photographs, and he plans to post more on a website, EyesAndEarsNuba.org and he was the one that helped Nick Kristof enter the Nuba Mountains.

Now more than ever we can feel the value of Ubuntu and realize that if one person is suffering, we are all suffering and must heed the cries for help and humanitarian assistance to the starving and afflicted people of South Kordofon/Nuba Mountains.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

All is not as it appears in the DRC as little is done to provide safety and security to the endangered and constantly antagonized Congolese civilian population. It is in the works to open up a third refugee camp in Uganda to cope with a influx of at least 100 people a day crossing the border to escape an upsurge in violence in eastern region of DRC. However, the population continues to be at risk from killings, abductions, and rape by armed men in the Eastern Kivu provinces, during transit, and in refugee camps. It is a situation replicated in thousands of registered and unregistered displaced persons settlements throughout the Great Lakes region. So what is being done?

The first case brought to the International Criminal Court filed in 2004 charging Congolese militia leader Thomas Lubanga with war crimes of enlisting and conscripting children under age 15 as soldiers during the conflict in 2002, has come to a verdict to be heard on March 14. This will be the ICC’s first judgment since its conception a decade ago. As an avid follower of DRC’s long entrenched conflict watching  heinous human rights abuses and brutal rapes committed, it’s extremely disappointing that this narrowly focused case is the only one being heard after nine years and does not even come close to address the extent of crimes endured by the thousands of civilians everyday. It is also important to mention that Lubanga’s co-accused, Bosco Ntaganda charged by the ICC at the same time with war crimes relating to the recruitment and use of child soldiers in Ituri is currently untouched and a Congoloses general.

“There has never been a systematic attempt to address the issue of impunity within the Congolese justice system,” said Aaron Hall, Enough Project Congo policy analyst and report co-author. “The lack of accountability for war crimes including the murder of civilians, rape, plunder, and extortion is one of the key obstacles to creating an environment for peace and development in eastern Congo.”

I believe the ICC and the international community should work much harder with local partners to begin to hold perpetrators accountable, tackle impunity, and bring an ounce of justice to victims and survivors in the DRC.

BURMA

Burma’s on the surface changes are twofold. On the one hand Burma has headed toward reform and cease-fires reached with ethnic insurgents, and unprecedented open discussion about human rights violations, including in Kachin State where fighting since last June has displaced 70,000 people. However, on the other hand, the Burmese army is acting no better than it has in the past six decades, with reports of sexual violence, use of forced labor and firing on civilians.

“With all the changes happening in central Burma, it’s quite alarming that the military has shown absolutely no compunction to change its behavior,” Human Rights Watch senior researcher, David Mathieson told the Wilson Center.

Mathieson also noted less-documented rights abuses by some ethnic armed groups against their own people, including use of child soldiers—rampant too in the national army—and executions of Burma prisoners of war. It goes to show that although Burma’s release of prominent political prisoners is a step towards change, Burma has a long way to go as sporadic fighting and lack of accord between Kachin rebels and Burmese government leaves thousands of civilians in makeshift camp on the Chinese border.

OC For Darfur meeting is on Tuesday, August 31 at 6:30p

Hi everyone,

Omar Bashir snubs ICC arrest warrant, visits Kenya

Just yesterday, Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir visited Kenya to celebrate the country’s new constitution. This was yet another chance to arrest and bring him to justice. Did the United States, Brazil and other major European governments know about this? How will they respond to this clear snub of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the UN Security Council?

The next OC For Darfur meeting this Tuesday, August 31st at 6:30p. We will meet at Patty’s office in Newport Beach. Here is the address:

Patty’s office @ 6:30p
2424 SE Bristol Street, Suite 300
Newport Beach, CA 92660

We will discuss:

• Update on what’s going on in Sudan, Congo and Burma.
• Planning for the screening of The Greatest Silence in September.
• Potential event featuring the Sudanese from San Diego in November.
• The United States and the International Criminal Court (ICC).

If you’d like to know more about us and our various activities, please join us at the meeting. We would love to have you participate.

Barbara & Anshul
Orange County for Darfur, a project of Living Ubuntu
ocfordarfur.org | calendar | blog | facebook

The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo

“Why is this happening? Why use sex in order to humiliate and defeat someone? To threaten someone so they flee their village? Why use sex? This is the monstrosity of the century.”
- Dr. Denis Mukwege, Panzi Hospital

Sunday, September 19 2010
6:30p refreshments
7:00p screening & discussion

Mesa Verde United Methodist Church

1701 W. Baker St
Costa Mesa, CA 92626

Cost:
Free

Since 1998 a brutal war has been raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Over 5 million people have died. Tens of thousands of women and girls who have been systematically kidnapped, raped, mutilated and tortured by soldiers from both foreign militias and the Congolese army. Why doesn’t the world know about these women? Why do they suffer in silence?

Visit http://livingubuntu.org/events for more information.
Please help us in planning for the event and RSVP on the website.

* * *

OC For Darfur meeting is tomorrow, Tuesday July 20th at 6:30p

Hi everyone,

Obama: Bashir should go to the Hague

We had a lovely get-together at Barbara’s and Betsy’s house this past Saturday to celebrate the 10th Birthday of the International Criminal Court (ICC). It is quite amazing what this young institution has accomplished in such a short amount of time (see the accomplishments).

Watching The Reckoning brought up many questions. Is the ICC achieving it’s mission of bringing to justice the worst offenders of crimes in the world? Who is responsible for apprehending Bashir now that the court has issued a warrant for his arrest? Even though 111 nations are members of the court, why hasn’t Russia, China and the United States joined? Should the US join?

The next OC For Darfur planning meeting is this Tuesday, July 20th at 6:30p. We will meet at Patty’s office in Newport Beach. Here is the address:

Patty’s office @ 6:30p
2424 SE Bristol Street, Suite 300
Newport Beach, CA 92660

We will discuss:

• Update on what’s going on in Sudan, Congo and Burma.
• Wrap-up from our Birthday Celebration for the ICC.
• Planning for our meeting with Congressman Ed Royce’s office this week.
• What should we do for Genocide Prevention Month next April?
• The United States and the International Criminal Court (ICC).

If you’d like to know more about us and our various activities, please join us at the meeting. We would love to have you participate.

Barbara & Anshul
Orange County for Darfur, a project of Living Ubuntu
ocfordarfur.org | blog | facebook

::: RECENT NEWS :::

U.S. special envoy unhappy about ICC genocide ruling against Sudanese president [read]
Jeffrey Gettleman: Somalia the “most dangerous place in the world.” [more]
Nicholas Kristof: The Security Council Sits on its Hands [more]-
Sudan expels two senior aid officials from Darfur [more]
Congress passes conflict minerals legislation [more]
Elections in Burma (Myanmar) won’t be fair, but they will be significant [more]

OC For Darfur planning meeting is this Tuesday, February 2nd

Hi everyone,

This Wedneday, the International Criminal Court (ICC) will issue a long awaited ruling on whether Sudanese President, Omar Al-Bashir committed genocide against citizens of his own country. Last year, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Bashir for crimes against humanity and murder, but decided that the evidence presented by chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo did not meet the “threshold required by Genocide convention and Rome Statue to establish that the gravest crime [genocide] has been committed in Darfur.”

Many of us eagerly await this ruling as it will certainly have an impact on the elections in Sudan in April. Click here to read the entire article.

Our next planning meeting is this Tuesday, February 2nd at 6:30p. We will meet at Patty’s office in Newport Beach. Here is the address.

Patty’s office @ 6:30p
2424 SE Bristol Street, Suite 300
Newport Beach, CA 92660

We will discuss:

• Update on what’s going on in Darfur, Congo and Burma.
• Planning for the documentary screening of “God Grew Tired of Us” this Thursday.
• Orange County Walk Against Genocide in April.
• What should we do to commemorate Genocide Prevention month in April?

If you’d like to get involved and help with the planning of any of these activities, I hope you will join us :)

See you on Tuesday.

Anshul Mittal
Orange County for Darfur
ocfordarfur.org | calendar | photos | shop | blog | facebook | twitter