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SAAF Update 2-2012
USAID reports that bombing in the border area of Upper Nile State’s Maban County on January 23 caused 5,000 additional refugees from Sudan’s Blue Nile State to flee south. Humanitarian relief continues to over 83,000 refugees in Upper Nile and Unity states, who have been displaced by ongoing fighting in Sudan. In Jonglei State close to 79,000 people are being provided with food and other life-saving relief because of the fighting. It is reprehensible that the humanitarian need caused by tribal fighting in Jonglei is almost as great as for Sudanese refugees who have fled to South Sudan from NCP attacks. When we see injustice and oppression our hearts should be moved with compassion. One group has been so moved and has taken action. On January 21-22, a group of about 25 South Sudanese from Jonglei state met in Washington, DC to address the bloodshed in their home communities. With compassion, prayer, understanding, a spirit of friendship, and fortitude, this group which represented all the communities in Jonglei set out to make a difference. The Jonglei Peace Initiative seeks to stop the fighting, identify the common causes of conflict, focus on building better relationships among the youth, find ways of sustaining peace and establish a means to prevent violence in the future. The group called the Jonglei Peace Initiative (JPI) quickly recognized the need for a counterpart group in Jonglei so it changed its name to JPI-USA and seeks to establish a group in Jonglei - JPI-SS. I was honored to be an invited guest of the group. It was impressive to watch the constructive interaction. Even before leaving they contacted their families, friends and neighbors urging them to return to their home areas and stop fighting. They pledged to get this message to others in the Sudanese diaspora and spread the message of peace. This success demonstrates that there can be peace in Jonglei among the multiple communities. This group of Anyuak, Dinka Bor, Lou Nuer and Murle are an example and a path to that peace. Sudanese who wish to be a part may contact Joseph Atem, a member of the information group who lives in Memphis at:Joseph Atem. They deserve our prayer and support. While this update focuses on Jonglei state, the genocide imposed by President Omer el Bashir continues in Darfur, Southern Kordofan, Abyei and Blue Nile areas. The international community dithers as the body count from over two decades of war by Bashir against his own people continues. Just as Bashir's greed and racism seem to have no bounds...over 3,000,000 slaughtered and 7,000,000 displaced, the ineffective, hand-wringing of the international community continues.
Sudan Advocacy Action Forum
News Summary provided by Dr. Eleanor Wright, Sudan Advocacy Action Forum
In this issue:
UNHCR urges support for Sudan refugees. More than 350,000 people have been forced to abandon their homes in three states in Sudan and South Sudan, according to the UN refugee agency. Two of the states - South Kordofan and Blue Nile - are in Sudan, while the third - Jonglei - is in the world's newest nation. In Blue Nile and South Kordofan, 100,000 people each have been forced out of their homes. Jonglei, in South Sudan, remains the worst affected, with inter-tribal violence having driven 150,000 from their homes. Speaking to Al Jazeera on January 27 from the World Economic Forum (WEF) summit in Davos, Switzerland, Antonio Guterres, the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR), said that the issues facing the three states are ultimately political ones - about borders, oil, and citizenship status after the formation of South Sudan last summer. In the six months since the independence of South Sudan, 360,000 people have arrived in the newly formed nation but Guterres said, "there is almost no economy, no infrastructure", leaving those arriving to the south with little in terms of integration into the young state. Guterres, who is at the Davos summit to ask for further financial aid for the UN's aid effort, asked for "massive support" from the international community to assist the hundreds of thousands of refugees. He said the UNHCR is doing all it can do to move the refugees further in-land and farther from the border regions where they could be subject to air raids and inter-community conflicts. It is "essential to preserve the civilian and humanitarian character of these camps", Guterres said. Further complicating the status of refugees in the two states is Sudan's announcement on Thursday that starting from April 8, all South Sudanese will be treated as foreigners by the state.
( Aljazeera, 01/27/2012)
South Sudan horror in deadly cattle vendetta. South Sudan has been engulfed by a wave of deadly raids by rival communities, which have left an unknown number of people dead. County medical officer James Chacha witnessed the attacks and thinks "2,000 plus" were killed by attackers en route to Pibor town, that he says stationed troops struggled to defend. Chacha said around 800 government troops in Pibor only fired on attackers when they had been driven back. The UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) had 400 peacekeepers in Pibor at the time of the attack and has increased numbers to 1,000. "That represents almost half of the UN's 2,100 combat ready personnel", who will be sent to reinforce densely populated areas, said UNMISS official Kouider Zerrouk.
The UN is concerned about accessibility for a "massive humanitarian response" aimed at around 60,000 people forced from their homes. "Our survival now depends on the food brought to us," said Akuer Alan, who like many has been living on wild fruit. The UN's World Food Program (WFP) registered more than 30,000 people in Pibor last week and 4,500 in Gumuruk, roughly 40 km away. South Sudan UN Humanitarian Coordinator Lise Grande says the lack of aid agencies working in the troubled state poses further difficulty. "In some of the worst-hit places, there are only a handful partners on the ground. In some places, there are none," she says. WFP is setting up distribution in Likuangole, one of the villages razed to the ground.
Pibor's only clinic, serving up to 160,000 people and run by medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), was looted and ransacked in the attack. MSF has been unable to track down around half of its 156 local staff since. Scattered papers and piles of medicines litter the mostly cordoned off premises, now treating many people suffering from malaria and injuries. "We are also seeing a lot of people with gunshot wounds, of people running away from the violence," said Karel Janssens, MSF Coordinator in Pibor.
Cattle lie at the heart of a long-standing enmity between the two communities.
In a country without banks, cows represent wealth, a dowry, property and a source of food in the lean season. A single cow can be worth hundreds of dollars depending on its coloring. The Murle and Lou Nuer have long raided each other's cattle, or battled over access to grazing land and water but the conflicts have turned increasingly deadly with the arrival of automatic weapons.
A December statement by a Nuer group based in the US claiming to be behind the advancing army vowed to "wipe out the entire Murle tribe on the face of the earth".
But Minister of Information Barnaba Marial Benjamin said the genocidal statement was the work of a refugee living in the US trying to capitalize on conflict he had no connection to. The Jonglei governor said that, after cattle raids in August 2011 left 600 people dead, the Nuer had agreed to halt retaliation if abducted women and children were returned. But after a three-month deadline passed and church-led peace talks collapsed in December, the rampaging youths unleashed their wrath.
Now authorities are struggling to stop a bitter enmity spiralling out of control. ( BBC, 01/16/2012)
Over 70 Ex-Athor forces surrender arms in Jonglei. Over 70 forces formerly loyal to the late renegade George Athor Deng, finally laid down their arms in Ayod County of Jonglei State, witnessed by a high level government delegation in what they termed as response to the amnesty declared by President Salva Kiir. According to Mr. Gabriel Duop Lam, Jonglei's Law Enforcement Minister and head of the government delegation during the occasion, the ex-rebels were adhering to the President’s amnesty offer announced 6 months ago on the eve of Independence Day.
The forces were given ultimate choice to either be disarmed and reintegrate in to the civil population or join the National army (SPLA). The head of the rebels said that there are more than 400 of them ready to lay down their arms but some fear prosecutions or imprisonment. The former rebels were highly welcomed by the local community and relatives in a beautiful occasion that was characterized by dancing, feasting together and singing joyful songs that they sang together many years ago. Today Ayod is becoming the safe haven for displaced persons from Duk and Uror Counties due to the ongoing tribal conflicts among the Dinka Bor, Lou Nuer and the Murle of Jonglei State. ( Gurtong, 01/20/2012)
Nearly 50 killed in Jonglei’s Duk County. Jonglei state governor, Kuol Manyang Juuk, said that at least 46 people were killed and seven wounded in Duk county following an attack late on January 16, by members of the Murle ethnic group from Pibor county. The Murle had reportedly captured and burnt down the county’s main town, Duk Padiet, home of the Dinka Bor ethnic group, before they were forced out of the area. The reprisal attacks began a week ago in response to a two-week offensive by armed members of the Lou-Nuer community of Akobo and Uror County, which Pibor authorities claim left over 3,000 dead, 1,500 women and children abducted and 89,000 heads of cattle stolen. The UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and the South Sudanese government dispute the figures.
It was not clear why the Murle decided to also attack the Dinka community of Duk County on January 15. However, reports have suggested that hundreds of armed men from the Dinka community joined the 6,000 Lou-Nuer fighters in the New Year assault on Pibor, perhaps prompting the retaliatory attacks on the Dinka. South Sudan’s minister for Interior Affairs, Alison Manana Magia, arrived in Bor early on January 17 and held a closed door meeting with the Jonglei state government.
Speaking at a press briefing, the minister said the government is working hard to improve security in Jonglei. ( Sudan Tribune, 01/17/2012)
Malaria and whooping cough kills 36 in Jonglei’s Duk County. A malaria and whooping cough outbreak in Jonglei State’s Duk County, has reportedly killed 36 people over the last month with a further 761 cases under medical care in Pajut clinic. The head of the health centre in Pajut village, Gai Tut, on Saturday told Sudan Tribune that 14 people have died of malaria and over 400 other people of various ages have been affected over the last four weeks. According to Tut, their clinics started receiving malaria and whooping cough cases in their numbers over last few days. He says some patients were lost due to lack of drugs. In the last two weeks 22 people have died and a further 361 are suffering from whooping cough.
Complaining about an acute lack of drugs, Tut called upon the state government to urgently send relevant drugs to the village. Delivering medicine to Duk County like other areas of Jonglei State is difficult due to the poor roads and infrastructure in South Sudan’s largest state. Most drugs from Mareng [the headquarters of Duk County] delivered to Pajut clinic from April to November last year were carried on the heads of local people at a cost Duk County’s Health Medical Department officer, Samuel Jima, told Sudan Tribune in Bor last week. "Even a carton of syringes, the lightest one, was carried from Mareng to Pajut [for] a 100SSP ($38) on people’s heads,” said Jima. ( Sudan Tribune, 01/21/2012)
Ban deplores attack on UN-African Union peacekeepers in Darfur. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned on January 21 the ambush by an unidentified group on a United Nations-African Union patrol in Sudan's Darfur region that led to the death of a Nigerian peacekeeper and the wounding of three others. The attack on the joint UN-AU peacekeeping force (UNAMID) took place near Saleah, Eastern State of Darfur. In a message issued by his spokesperson, Mr. Ban urged the Government of Sudan to carry out a speedy investigation and to ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice. The Secretary-General also expressed his condolences to the Government of Nigeria and to the family of the fallen peacekeeper. Since the initial deployment of UNAMID on December 31, 2007, 35 peacekeepers have been killed as a result of hostile action. ( UN News Centre, 01/21/2012)
Sudan sells seized South Sudan crude at deep discount. Sudan has sold at least one cargo of crude seized from South Sudan at millions of dollars discount and is offering more, industry sources said, as Khartoum looks to recover oil revenue from its former civil war foe. A bitter row has escalated between the two over the value of the transit fee landlocked South Sudan should pay for oil pumped north by pipeline through its northern neighbor and exported from Port Sudan. South Sudan is shutting down production in protest after Khartoum blocked exports and seized some of the oil as compensation. South Sudan's President Salva Kiir accused Khartoum of having "looted" revenues amounting to roughly $815 million from crude cargoes. The seized crude was loaded onto three tankers from January 13-20, South Sudan's justice ministry said. Sudan sold one of those cargoes, a 600,000 barrel shipment loaded on the vessel Ratna Shradha, to a North Asian trader. The final price of the sale was unclear, but one trader said that the cargo was sold at a discount as steep as $14 a barrel. That would indicate an $8.4 million discount for the whole cargo. "This is crude from the South sold by the North at a $14 discount to the South's last selling price," a Middle East-based crude trader said. ( Reuters, 01/27/2012)
South Sudan shuts down oil production. The South Sudan national council of ministers in its regular meeting, held January 20 under the chairmanship of the President Salva Kiir Mayardit, directed the Minister for Petroleum and Mining to shut down oil production in the Republic of South Sudan. This directive was in response to the continuous stealing of South Sudan’s oil by the Khartoum government as well as the blockage of South Sudan’s oil from going to the international markets. Reports indicate that Sudan has stolen Republic of South Sudan’s oil worth 350 million US dollars. According to the minister for Information and Broadcasting Dr Barnaba Marial Benjamin, who is also the official government spokesperson, the cabinet directive followed a report tabled by the minister in the Office of the President Hon. Emmanuel LoWilla and the minister for Petroleum and Mining Hon. Stephen Dhieu who had been sent by the President to the neighboring countries such as Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia to consult over the oil crisis between Juba and Khartoum. Through the report the council made the following resolutions:
(1) The minister for Petroleum and Mining is directed to take appropriate steps to shut down oil production and avoid any environmental impacts in the area;
(2) The Ministry of Petroleum and Mining is directed to proceed immediately with the construction of an alternative pipeline and refineries so that the Republic of South Sudan can mitigate these problems initiated by the Khartoum government. ( Gurtong, 01/21/2012)
China urges calm talk for Sudan, South Sudan. China on January 21 urged the governments of Sudan and South Sudan to remain calm and restrained and resolve their differences over oil exports through "negotiation at an early date." "Oil is the economic lifeline shared by Sudan and South Sudan," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Liu Weimin said in remarks posted on the ministry's website, adding that the Beijing government "hopes that the two governments will fulfill their commitment to protecting the legal rights of Chinese enterprises and those of other partners." The ministry noted that the government of South Sudan had ordered the gradual halt of all oil production due to a disagreement with Sudan over fees for moving South Sudan's oil via Sudan's pipelines and harbors.
State-owned China National Petroleum Corp., India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp. and Malaysia's Petroliam Nasional Bhd., or Petronas, account for around 90% of the combined oil production in the two countries. The Chinese company is the largest foreign investor in the two countries' energy sectors, and China takes about half of their oil exports. Official customs data show China's imports of oil from the two have ranged between 200,000 barrels and 280,000 barrels a day in recent months. ( Wall Street Journal, 01/21/2012)
Churches in Sudan encounter more hostility after south’s independence. Christians and churches in Sudan are facing increased restrictions and hostility since the secession of Southern Sudan six months ago, according to some church leaders. “Restrictions in Sudan are not new, but we are worried things are getting harder since the secession of the south. With Sharia law we expect things to get even harder,” the Rev. Mark Akec Cien, the Sudan Council of Churches, deputy general secretary of the told ENInews on January 20 in a telephone interview. Sudan’s Ministry of Guidance and Religious Endowment has threatened to arrest church leaders if they carried out evangelistic activities, according to Compass Direct News, a service that reports on Christians’ persecution. The ministry has also been demanding names and contact places of churches, the service said. It referred to a warning letter sent to the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church on January 3 by Hamid Yousif Adam, the ministry undersecretary. “This is a critical situation faced by our church in Sudan,” the Rev. Yousif Matar told the news service. At the same time, fear intensified among Christians on January 16 following the abduction of two Roman Catholic priests by a militia in Rabak, south of Khartoum.
Commenting on the kidnapping, the Roman Catholic Bishop Daniel told ENInews the militia was demanding a ransom of 500,000 Sudanese pounds (US$180,000) to release the clerics. ( Borglobe, 01/21/2012)
Obama sending 5 US military officers to South Sudan. President Barack Obama is sending five American military officers to support the United Nations mission in South Sudan. The move comes amid recent outbreaks of deadly ethnic violence in South Sudan, which gained independence last year. Obama issued a memorandum Tuesday stating US personnel operating in South Sudan would not be at risk of prosecution by the International Criminal Court because South Sudan is not a party to the ICC. The White House says the officers will be based in the capital of Juba and will focus on strategic planning and operations. They are not expected to engage in combat operations, but will be armed for personal protection.
(Associated Press, 01/10/2012) Only 16% of students taking primary exams in Rumbek are female. Of nearly 2,000 pupils taking their final primary school exams in Rumbek, the capital of Lakes State, only 16% are female according to the Director of Examinations in the state ministry of education Marial Manesa Makoi. Makoi told Sudan Tribune that the overall the number of students sitting for the exams had increased from the previous year. He cautioned the state government to provide more secondary school places to ensure that all students were able to continue their education. However, schools conducting the exams have increased from 35 to 45 this year. Makoi said that the government needed to act now in order for be ready for an increase in students at all levels. He cautioned pupils to adopt good behavior, display discipline, and avoid cheating in examinations. Girls are used by many families to bring in bridal wealth and so a married early. In many parts of South Sudan it is acceptable for a girl to marry as soon as she has menstruated meaning that many never finish school. ( Sudan Tribune, 01/11/2012) |
