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1 United States Institute of Peace Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Sudan Experience Project United States Institute of Peace Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Sudan Experience Project Interview # 72 –Executive Summary Interviewed by: Barbara Nielsen Initial interview date: March 22, 2007 Copyright 2007 USIP & ADST The interviewee, director of a U.S. NGO, has been working in the Sudan since 1998. Her mission is to connect the church there with resources in the U.S. Her organization seeks to create awareness of the needs of the Sudanese church and of the suffering of Sudanese Christians, and to provide concrete help in creating economic livelihoods for the poor. Since the signing of the CPA, this interviewee notes that persecution of Christians continues unchanged, with churches continuing to be destroyed. She notes that despite the nominal peace brought by the CPA, there are ongoing attacks by the Lords Resistance Army mixed with Sudanese Armed Forces. In her view, these attacks are part of a plan by the Khartoum government to destabilize the South and to keep divisions among Southerners alive. Because it controls the media, the government also sows seeds of dissention among southerners through disinformation. Despite intelligence cooperation with the U.S. after 9/11, and despite signing the CPA, the Government of Sudan has not, in her view, changed its fundamental attitudes. While admiring the leadership of Salva Kiir, she is critical of many of the officials of the government of South Sudan in Juba, noting their high degree of conspicuous consumption and seeming preoccupation with their new positions. According to this interviewee, the biggest failure of the CPA is the international community’s failure to pressure the Northern government to comply with its terms, given that strong pressure is the only way to get the Khartoum government to change its negative behavior. 1 United States Institute of Peace Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Sudan Experience Project Interview # 72 Interviewed by: Barbara Nielsen Initial interview date: March 22, 2007 Copyright 2007 USIP & ADST Q: Let me ask you when you became involved in Sudan and where you work? A: I became involved in Sudan in late 1998. I’d been hearing of the Sudanese refugees and met some in the Washington area, became concerned about them. And then when I received an invitation to go as part of a team to minister in the South in the Episcopal Church I agreed to go. I went in January of 1999. Q: Where were you working in Sudan? A: On the first trip we went to Maridi and Lui. We went at the invitation of a bishop from the South who’d been rather isolated from the rest of the world during the war and had asked the church to send in a team to do teaching in the church. But I’ve continued to go back since and I’ve been to a number of other areas in the South. At the moment I’m working with an area of the northern Bahr el Ghazal, in western Aweil. Q: Who was your sponsor at this time? A: I was under the coverage of the Episcopal Church on the ground there, working with the bishop, and then there are churches here that support me in the ministry there. I formed a little ministry and I work to connect the church there with resources here and with advocacy and help to create awareness of the needs of the church there and the suffering of the church. Q: The Episcopal Church is sanctioned in the South but what are the conditions under which it operates? Apparently, one important milestone along the way to the final CPA, called the Declaration of Principles, established that the church -- or rather the Sudanese-- should enjoy freedom of religion. How do you see that playing out in the areas where you’ve worked? A: Well, I guess at the moment you could say there’s a certain amount of freedom in the church It’s just that they are still cut off from any help. They have not noticed any change in their life since the signing of the peace agreement two years ago. I guess the difference is there are not bombs falling at the moment, but day to day life has not really changed. I know those in the North still suffer the same discrimination they always did, but in the South the church is able to carry on, but in a very difficult situation, with very 2 little health care, mostly none, in most places and other development resources are just very scarce. The area I’m working in now, up in northern Bahr el Ghazal, experienced many of the Janjaweed raids that are taking place in Darfur, took place in their area over the years. You still see areas where there is scorched earth, where villages were burned and churches burned. I’ve talked to church members that say, “We’ve rebuilt and they would come right through and burn them again, determined to put out our church life, determined to do away with us, but they have not succeeded.” But life is very, very difficult. Many people also, women and children particularly, were captured and taken into slavery. Many are still in slavery. There are long lists of names of people still missing. And I’ve interviewed some that have come back and told of being beaten and forced to do things they didn’t want to do, of their names being changed to a Muslim name and forced to bow to Allah every day. The ones I’ve met have managed to escape and received help from others getting back to the South. But the church leaders tell me that where there have been larger numbers released and brought back to the South, it’s very difficult for them, too, because some of these women now have children by these northern masters and they’re just brought back to the South and have no way to support themselves. So it’s dire. Some of them even think maybe they should go back to the North, because at least in slavery they had food. So it’s a terrible problem. I’ve spoken with pastors and I’m working with one pastor, for instance, who is an archdeacon over the 46 little congregations up in that area. He had evangelized that area himself, after returning from Ethiopia, where he had fled and was considered one of the lost boys. He had come back to share with his people and lead his people. He spoke of these raids that came into their church and literally dragged women and children right out of the church, and sometimes even burning the church with people left in them. Q: They were really targeting Christians, not only the ethnic peoples who lived in the area? A: Right, they were targeting the Christians and trying to make an example by burning them in the church and killing anyone who tried to run. In one case this pastor that I work with said one of his associate pastors was drug out of the church, tied to the back of a horse and drug all through the village, until he was in pieces, until they literally went all over the village picking up the pieces. These are the sorts of things they’ve lived through up there. Q: And this has been pretty irrespective of the time period, in other words, since the time you became involved in 1998, 1999, up to the present, this has been a fairly steady stream of occurrences? A: It has. That’s not occurring so much right now. There’s more of that going on in Darfur right now. But, as I said, these people that were taken are still in slavery, you know. There was this government group that agreed to collaborate and return some 3 slaves. They have returned some, but they claim they have run out of money and nothing’s being done on that right now. They ran out of money in 2005 Q: Funded by the government? A: They’re funded by the government and they released about three thousand people. But someone who worked with that group, has been working for twenty years in Sudan to see the release of slaves, has a list of names of eight thousand people that he said could be returned today if there were political will and if there were funds to make that happen. He’s certain there are thousands more still in slavery, but that eight thousand names that he has are people from that area. Q: And that’s just this area where you’re targeting? A: I spoke with a man who said that not only was he captured himself, but all of his cattle were taken and his name was changed and he was forced to bow to Allah every day. He eventually escaped and made it back to his area there, but one of his children was taken that he’s never heard from again. Q: It’s almost too hard to imagine. A: It is. There’s not a family up there that has not been affected in some way. It’s hard to believe what these people have endured up there. It’s beyond what the mind can comprehend. Q: They’re actually transported quite some distance, not just to the neighboring valley? A: Well, first of all, they carry the master’s load all the way back to the North Q: And the master is a herder, or a farmer? A: Can be. Some of them are Arab cattlemen.
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