AFRICANEWS

Sudan

NUBA NGO PLEADS FOR INTERVENTION

Human Rights

In a press release issued on 15 January 1999 Nuba Relief Rehabilitation and Development Society (NRRDS) a Nuba indigenous humanitarian organisation, accuses the United Nations, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and other international organisations of being not considerate when dealing with issues regarding the Nuba Mountains.

NRRDS says that the International community has been too symphatetic with the Khartoum government and their act of turning a blind eye to all the brutal dehumanisation that happens in the Nuba Mountains could not be justified.

The press release further says "inspite of the abominable famine that displaced many and caused severe deaths, the United Nations' Operation Life Line Sudan, (OLS) and the International Commission for the Red Cross (ICRC) are not persuading the government to permit access for assessments." What was then a politicised form of relief permit which took place in May 1997 has been withdrawn before any humanitarian organisation took the initiative of conducting any assessments programs. The suffering of the aged, children and the Nuba dispossessed is therefore most likely to continue if no immediate interference from the UN comes in rescue of the situation.

The Nuba who inhabit the Central part of Sudan, numbering about 400.000 joined the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M) early in 1986. They are fully supporting the struggle for a democratic government that advocates cultural multiplicity and equal rights.

On these lines the Nuba has never experienced a cease fire declaration from the Governement of Sudan (GOS) in response to humanitarian assessments. The then known cease fire of March 1997 was implicitly for southern Sudan, leaving the Nuba villages to be the focus of military offenses.

The technical switching of the GOS army strategy from the south, made the area to witness diabolical air raids on villages which contributed in worsening the condition of sporadic famine. Many civilians died as a result and numerous majorities were displaced. The situation is not any better than that of Bahr El Gazel of Southern Sudan in terms of hunger and instability.

The press release revealed that Human rights violation is present in forms of rape and modern slavery under the guised of "Peace camps" policies, where many are abducted in compliance to the coercive peace strategies. Isolation and subjugation from national and international communities remains the facet of the crisis. This situation has made the Nuba area unexposed regionally and internationally, thus giving room to all kinds of dehumanization and of course misrepresentation of reality.

According to Mr. Neuron Philip the NRRDS chairman comment, the United Nations is currently exacerbating the suffering of the Nuba by colluding with the GOS, while expending vast resources on the futile and extravagant aid programs. The international community as a whole and the UN, Red Cross as parts are fallible so at times they need to be chastised and if necessarily rebuked for not being impartial against totalitarian regimes that leaves its citizens in complete misery," he says.

The Nuba are not an exemption to the entire Sudanese suffering but the total negation in exposing their situation through free access to the area and impartial presentations of the Human Rights abuses are the hand behind their suffering.

NRRDS finally concludes that the International community's act of not being responsive to such inhumanities will have no justification "either International organization senior staff are symphatetic and therefore in consent with the GOS policies of coercion or in a phobic state to overtly oppose these diabolical policies through persuasive measures of getting access to impartially assessing the entire war torn Sudan."

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