From: Jim Rosenfield <jnr@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african
Date: 05 Oct 92 21:36 PDT
Subject: Re: 9/24 Wire Stories on Hunger
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1471700142:cdp:1471700145:000:4871
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!jnr    Oct  5 21:36:00 1992


/* Written  8:58 pm  Sep 24, 1992 by jnr in cdp:hunger.general */
APn  09/24 1252  Sudan

Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

   EDITOR'S NOTE: The United States this week expressed "sadness and
outrage" over the execution on charges of treason of Andrew Tombe, a
Sudanese employee of the U.S. Embassy in Sudan. The State Department
also cited reports of widespread killing and abuse of civilians in
southern Sudan by government troops. An AP correspondent who was
recently in Sudan reports on conditions there:

------

By DALIA BALIGH

Associated Press Writer

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) -- Three years ago, a military coup put Lt. Gen.
Omar Hassan el-Bashir in control of Sudan, Africa's largest country
and one of the world's poorest. He turned the multi-religious country
into an Islamic state and has pushed to overhaul the economy and crush
a now 9-year-old rebellion.

In doing so, Sudan's government has flagrantly violated human rights.

"The situation for human rights is extremely serious," says the
London-based Amnesty International.

"Anyone who is non-Muslim is a second-class citizen," says the Rev.
Roger Schrock of the New Sudan Council of Churches, based in Nairobi,
Kenya.

The main conflict in the nation of 28 million has been between the
Arab Muslim majority government in the north and southern rebels, who
are mainly Christians and animists of African descent.

Amnesty International on Wednesday accused the government of secretly
and summarily executing hundreds of civilians in the southern Sudanese
capital, Juba. The civilians were suspected of being sympathizers of
the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army.

"Government forces are reported to have deliberately killed at least
300 unarmed civilians and prisoners and to have arrested hundreds of
others," the London-based human rights organization said.

It spoke of civilians being interrogated and shot pointblank on the
streets and of prisoners disappearing and then their bodies being seen
in the White Nile.

Deprived of all but humanitarian aid from the United States and other
Western nations because of el-Bashir's coup and his record on human
rights, Sudan is pursuing an economic overhaul aimed at
self-sufficiency.

The government, which has been selling off unprofitable state-run
companies, says Sudan has become self-sufficient in wheat and sorghum
production.

One of the reasons is that the government has forced thousands of
southerners to work on 45 "peace farms." The government says it is
finding jobs for its people. Western relief workers and diplomats see
it as a form of slavery.

El-Bashir's regime exports the additional grain to earn foreign
currency or sends it to famine-beleaguered neighbors like Somalia
while its southern civilians, caught in the crossfire of the civil
war, have to depend on Western relief food.

Travel permits outside Khartoum for Western officials and reporters
have been largely curtailed from the trouble spots, but eyewitness
reports are filtering back.

These talk of the forcible evacuation of between 17,000 and 45,000
Christian and animist inhabitants of the southern Nuba mountain area
because of their support of the rebels. They also speak of young Nuban
children separated from their families and forced to work in the homes
of Arabs.

An estimated 3 million southerners have fled the fighting near their
homes and farms and moved to northern Sudan. Thousands have died on
the way.

During the past year, Sudan's government moved tens of thousands of
southerners from shantytowns around Khartoum to camps in the desert an
hour's drive away. There, they have no money to travel to the city for
daily work and are virtual prisoners. Many have been put to work on
the government farms.

"We moved them to places better than those they were in," said
Abdallah Idriss, Sudan's attorney general and justice minister. "They
can leave to work in production areas, but not to come into the cities
to avoid overburdening resources for security consideration."

The dwellings in the desert camps are makeshift huts of stick and
canvas. During a recent officially organized tour of one of the camps,
southern chiefs were not satisfied.

"Our people want to go to the city to look for work but they do not
have enough money to pay for transportation," said Zio Alroy Bol, who
came to Khartoum from his home in the Upper Nile region shortly after
the war started in 1983.

In addition to ethnic and religious persecution, el-Bashir's
government has cracked down hard on any opposition among Arab Muslims
in the north.

"Torture, brutal beatings and short term detention in secret detention
centers, known as ghost houses, are the Sudan government's standard
reaction to dissent," Amnesty International says. 
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Used with permission of Associated Press