AFRICANEWS

Sudan

Nuba: Set the downtrodden free

Human Rights

Africa has experienced numerous armed conflicts which have devastated some countries and which have revealed repeated violations of human rights as well as crimes against humanity. Liberia is a case in point.

Kerker is one of the big villages in the Nuba mountains and within the "liberated" areas of Southern Sudan. The village has one school and runs two sessions in the morning and evening. The school offers basic literacy classes for children at primary level and to adults. Some 400 pupils and 200 adults attend the classes everyday. The school is run by the local community with only six teachers who are equipped with hardly any professional skills but determination and enthusiasm.

The Kerker villagers are a simple and struggling people trying to reconstruct their lives after years of struggle against the Khartoum regime. They represent many other villagers who are building schools to quench the thirst of knowledge for their children, constructing small chapels in a bid to be a Christian community, they till their land and dig wells because they want to live an independent life and not rely on relief material from foreigners. They know well that by so doing they are gradually regaining their identity and pride. "People here are very hard-working, each contributes according to his/her abilities and capabilities. They feel that they belong here and thus have a duty to give not just to receive." Says Khadir Jadier, a catchiest ministering the local community at Corker. "They don't count on the hardships they experience, the abject poverty or the war in the country but on what identifies them as the Nub people," he adds.

The Nub people are really a proud people of their distinctive traditions. They are a people with a myriad of cultures and traditions of the more than fifty different tribal groups in the Nub Mountains. "Their music, dance, body art and wrestling have been made famous by some western photographers and anthropologists, and most Nub people are proud.. ." says a critique of humanitarianism by African Rights entitled Food and power in Sudan, 1997.

But what has the more the 30 years of fighting done to the Nub people? In the last six months, the Sudan Government has bombed civilian targets in the Nub mountains several times. Recounting the recent acts of violence against the Nub people, Martin Macaw, airports director for the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPA), is bitter and in great pain when he recounts some of the incidents. "One serious attack, still fresh in mind, took place on August 3, it was before the Inter-Governmental Authority on Drought and Development (ID) peace talks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I am not sure which villages were targeted but three children from Limn one from Tiara and one from Toro lost their lives while four other civilians were wounded."

He told Africanews that these attacks inflicted great damage and destruction on the people and properties in the area.

Such attacks are common and the people are always insecure. The sound of an Antonio is a sign of danger and anybody will outright recognize its sound from far. Macaw talked of another serious attack on September 25 last year. "An Antonio made two strikes in Char and Corker killing and wounding a good number of civilians who had gathered in these villages to receive relief food. Little did they know they would meet their death there." With sadness and pity all over his face, he says "Solemn Gondrian, 32, a catchiest at Limon Catholic church in Tira with his I year old Emanueal Suleiman died in the attack."

The Nuba of Central Sudan are one the largest of many non-Arab groups in the Sudan. Like the people of South Sudan, the Nuba have equally suffered tremendously from the policy of 'closed districts' administration, which was imposed on them by the British 45 years ago. They were denied access to education; administration and development while the Arabs in the North were better off. They have since been suppressed, marginalised and dispossessed of their land and culture. According to Suleiman Rahhal, editor of NAFIR, a newsletter of the Nuba mountains address to the Conservative Human rights Group in London on 27 October 1998, "For the past 42 years since our independence, the Nuba have been oppressed and marginalised by successive central governments that have ruled the Sudan and the Nuba Mountains region has been totally neglected."

Suleiman Rahhal gives an account of the 1992 events and says that it was the darkest year in the Nuba history since the war in the Nuba Mountains began in July 1985.

During that year the National Islamic Front (NIF) declared a war of Jihad in the Nuba Mountains and began the massive forced removal of the Nuba people from their ancestral homeland, to what are known as "peace villages" in Northern Kordofan. In the course of events a large number of villages were burnt and many innocent people were killed. Many children and women were taken by Northern Sudanese families to work as unpaid labourers. Many families were split up and it became clear that the government was aiming to eradicate the culture of the Nuba.

Asked what this meant to the local people, Fr Solomon, a Catholic priest from Gindel Parish, says "This war is terribly destructive. It has cost uncountable lives of our people, it has made us poor, and has rendered us beggars relying on relief supplies. Our people long for lasting peace. I wonder why the international community can't take a more concrete step towards ending this conflict." Fr Solomon had been held up at Lokichogio, a town in northern part of Kenya 25 kilometres from the Kenya-Sudan border and which has for the last 15 years become a beehive of activities of international relief agencies operating in the Southern Sudan. He was there waiting for a cargo of relief items to deliver to the Nuba Mountains. He commends the immense efforts by relief organisations which include Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), the Norwegian Peoples Aid (NPA), Medicines San Frontiers among others, who have been providing relief assistance to South Sudan.

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