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A COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT OF U.S. POLICY

TOWARD SUDAN

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, 

AND HUMAN RIGHTS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

OCTOBER 4, 2011

Serial No. 112–110

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/

(II)

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida, Chairman 

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey 

DAN BURTON, Indiana 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

DANA ROHRABACHER, California 

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois 

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

RON PAUL, Texas 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

JOE WILSON, South Carolina 

CONNIE MACK, Florida 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas 

TED POE, Texas 

GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida 

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio 

BILL JOHNSON, Ohio 

DAVID RIVERA, Florida 

MIKE KELLY, Pennsylvania 

TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina 

ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York 

RENEE ELLMERS, North Carolina 

VACANT 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York 

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American 

Samoa 

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida 

DENNIS CARDOZA, California 

BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky 

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York 

ALLYSON SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

FREDERICA WILSON, Florida 

KAREN BASS, California 

WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts 

DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island 

YLEEM D.S. POBLETE, Staff Director 

RICHARD J. KESSLER, Democratic Staff Director 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, AND HUMAN RIGHTS

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Chairman 

JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska 

TIM GRIFFIN, Arkansas 

TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania 

ANN MARIE BUERKLE, New York 

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey 

KAREN BASS, California 

RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

WITNESSES 

The Honorable Princeton Lyman, Special Envoy for Sudan, U.S. Department 

of State .................................................................................................................. 6

Mr. Ker Aleu Deng, emancipated slave from the Republic of South Sudan ....... 26

Ge ́rard Prunier, Ph.D., nonresident senior fellow, Michael S. Ansari Africa 

Center, Atlantic Council ...................................................................................... 30

Mr. John Prendergast, co-founder, The Enough Project ...................................... 38

Ms. Ellen Ratner, journalist ................................................................................... 49

LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING 

The Honorable Princeton Lyman: Prepared statement ........................................ 10

Mr. Ker Aleu Deng: Prepared statement ............................................................... 28

Ge ́rard Prunier, Ph.D.: Prepared statement ......................................................... 33

Mr. John Prendergast: Prepared statement .......................................................... 42

Ms. Ellen Ratner: Prepared statement .................................................................. 51

APPENDIX 

Hearing notice .......................................................................................................... 68

Hearing minutes ...................................................................................................... 69

The Honorable Russ Carnahan, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Missouri: 

Prepared statement .............................................................................................. 70

Questions submitted for the record .................................................................... 71

(1)

A COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT OF U.S. 

POLICY TOWARD SUDAN 

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2011

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICA, GLOBAL HEALTH, AND HUMAN RIGHTS

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:22 p.m., in room 

2200, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H. Smith 

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding. 

Mr. SMITH. The subcommittee will come to order. And I want to 

thank everyone for being here and especially for your patience. We 

did have a series of votes on the House floor. 

So, Mr. Ambassador, and to all of our distinguished guests and 

friends, I apologize for the lateness. We are holding today’s hearing 

for the purpose of examining a wide range of issues involving U.S. 

policy toward Sudan, including the ongoing attacks on Southern 

Kordofan and Blue Nile States; the continuing negotiations with 

the Republic of South Sudan, on challenges, such as the demarcation of the border, the fate of the Abyei region, citizenship in both 

countries, and oil revenue sharing. Additionally, this hearing provides opportunities to receive an update on the U.S. response to the 

enduring stalemate on Darfur and to examine U.S. policy on the 

release of Sudanese still held in bondage throughout Sudan. 

Ambassador, thank you again for being here and for your work 

on behalf of peace and justice in Sudan. 

Two months ago, this subcommittee held an emergency hearing 

on the attacks by the Republic of Sudan on its own Southern 

Kordofan State. The crisis first arose in June, shortly after the 

military forces of the Khartoum government attacked the disputed 

Abyei area. This was apparently a provocation to the Sudanese 

People’s Liberation Movement, or SPLM, government in what is 

now South Sudan just before the country’s new independence. This 

vicious attack didn’t provoke the SPLM into retaliation, which 

would have or could have derailed its independence. Nevertheless, 

dozens of people were killed and more than 200,000 were displaced 

in the immediate aftermath of the Northern attack on its own territory. 

This violence was a tragic resumption of a prior war by the 

Khartoum government on the Nuba of Southern Kordofan. Beginning in the 1980s, Islamic elements in the North began an eradication campaign against the Nuba, pitting Northern Arabs against 

Africans to the South. Earlier this month, the Sudanese military 

2

bombed its own Blue Nile State, including attacks on the Governor’s residence. Nearly half a million people were affected by the 

air and ground assault on Blue Nile. It seems the so-called ceasefire in Southern Kordofan was only a pretext to facilitate preparations for the assault on Blue Nile. 

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the NorthSouth civil war was supposed to provide for consultations for both 

states, so residents could determine their political future. However, 

Khartoum didn’t want to risk their breakaway and lose them, as 

it had South Sudan. The promised consultations were held in Blue 

Nile but postponed in Southern Kordofan. 

When the SPLM-North members of Southern Kordofan and Blue 

Nile didn’t lay down their arms in advance of South Sudan’s independence, Khartoum used that as an excuse to eliminate those who 

had supported the South in the long civil war. A preemptive strike 

in Southern Kordofan evidently was meant to chase out those who 

had opposed Khartoum. The members of the SPLM-North were 

stalked by the Sudanese military who went door to door to eliminate them. 

The similar attack in Blue Nile was intended to purge that state 

of the supposed opponents of the Khartoum government living 

there as well. In fact, the Southern Sudanese People’s Liberation 

Army-North Governor of Blue Nile, has been chased out of the capitol by Northern military forces. 

As the world was focused on the January referendum, in which 

Southerners voted for an independent South Sudan, human rights 

organizations reported rising violence in Darfur. There was a resumption of conflict in several locations in North and South Darfur 

between Sudanese Government military forces and Sudanese Liberation Army rebels loyal to Minni Minawi, a signatory to the nowdefunct 2006 Darfur Peace Agreement. 

Recently, the Sudanese Army clashed with the rebel Justice and 

Equality Movement, or JEM, in the remote area of North Darfur, 

near Sudan’s triangle border with Chad and Libya. Darfur rebels 

have attacked Omdurman and Khartoum in Northern Sudan in 

2008, which resulted in a massive crackdown on dissidents. 

The brutality by the Sudanese military will not crush the desire 

for freedom in Abyei, Southern Kordofan, Blue Nile, or Darfur. In 

seeking to prevent the secession of these states and the special administrative area of Abyei, Bashir’s government may be sowing 

seeds for Sudan’s eventual dissolution. Until that time however, 

the international community must continue to press for an end to 

the attacks on Sudanese, using all of our available diplomatic and 

economic resources. The human rights of the people in the North 

must be every bit as important to us as the rights of those in the 

South have been. 

Meanwhile, we have known that raiders from the North were 

killing Southern men and taking women and children for slavery 

for decades. Reports from human rights groups in the U.S. Department of State on Sudanese slavery gained the attention of Members of Congress, such as myself, as early as the 1980s because of 

the serious human rights implications of modern-day slavery. 

I would note parenthetically that I chaired the first congressional 

hearing ever held on slavery in Sudan on March 13, 1996. Our witVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:20 Feb 29, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\AGH\100411\70583 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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nesses included then-Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs 

William Twaddell; Samuel Cotton of the Coalition Against Slavery 

in Mauritania and Sudan; Dr. Charles Jacobs of the American 

Anti-Slavery Group; Baroness Caroline Cox, Deputy Speaker of the 

British House of Lords, who testified on behalf of Christian Solidarity International; and Dr. Gaspar Biro, Human Rights 

Rapporteur of the United Nations. Fifteen years ago, these witnesses cited the gross human rights violations committed by the 

Government of Sudan and their failure to cooperate in addressing 

slavery. Special Rapporteur Biro referred to it as ‘‘manifest passivity of the Government of Sudan.’’ And of course, others thought 

it even worse, complete and total complicity. Deputy Assistant Secretary Twaddell said the Clinton administration acknowledged 

then that slavery was an ugly reality in Sudan. 

Following a visit to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-held portion of Sudan in November 2000, then-Assistant Secretary of State 

for African Affairs Susan Rice said that neither the Clinton administration nor its successor would cease working to end slavery in 

Sudan. 

Why has that promise simply not been kept? When former Assistant Secretary Rice made that pledge, the U.N. estimated that 

there were as many as 15,000 Southern Sudanese held in bondage 

after being abducted in raids by Arab militiamen on Southern villages. While the current exact number of Sudanese slaves is unknown, too many people remain in slavery in Sudan and more continue to join them each day. 

The State Department’s 2011 Trafficking in Persons Report lists 

Sudan as a Tier III country that is a continuing source, transit, 

and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to 

forced labor and sex trafficking. Slavery remains a pervasive and 

deeply disturbing reality in Sudan, and we cannot in good conscience allow this to continue. 

We have had active campaigns to end Sudanese slavery, especially those initiated by Christian Solidarity International, to end 

genocide in Darfur, to end the North-South civil war, and now to 

end the attacks in Abyei, South Kordofan and Blue Nile. Unfortunately, these campaigns have been conducted in isolation from one 

another. 

If we are to have a successful policy to stop the suffering of Sudan’s people, our Government must devise a comprehensive policy 

for addressing all of Sudan’s challenges. To facilitate such a policy 

consolidation, civil society also must support a coordinated policy in 

a matter of their particular area of concern. Therefore, I would call 

on all civil society organizations concerned about the people of 

Sudan—and you certainly have done tremendous work over the 

years—to work together and demonstrate to our Government the 

wisdom and the effectiveness of a coordinated American policy on 

Sudan. 

I would like to now yield to my friend and colleague, Mr. Payne, 

for any opening comments he might have. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. 

And let me begin by thanking Chairman Smith for his attention 

in the continuing crisis in Sudan. As indicated, we have had numerous hearings throughout the years when he was chair and then 

4

I was chair, and now that he is chair and we continue to focus on 

this very important part of the world, very troubled part. 

So I applaud him for continuing to have attention paid to this 

area. 

I also would want to thank our witnesses, that we appreciate 

their years and years of following this very important issue. Of 

course, Ambassador Lyman, who has a career in the State Department in troubled places, whether it is Haiti or South Sudan, and 

we are very pleased that you are our special envoy to the country. 

We are looking forward to the testimony today about the overall 

policy toward the Republic of Sudan in the aftermath of the independence of South Sudan and the attacks on Southern Kordofan 

and Blue Nile State. As we are all aware, on July 9th, the people 

of Southern Sudan officially seceded and formed the world’s newest 

nation, South Sudan. I was among the delegation with Ambassador 

Lyman and General Colin Powell and many others present, Dr. 

Susan Rice, at the ceremony. And I witnessed the joy of the people 

of South Sudan and how jubilant they felt that day after many, 

many years of—22 years of civil war and 5 years of interim government, that the day finally came that they received their independence. 

Prior to secession, Sudan weathered decades of devastating civil 

war. In 2005, with the help of the United States and other nations, 

Khartoum’s National Congress Party and South Sudan’s People’s 

Liberation Movement, SPLM, signed a Comprehensive Peace 

Agreement, and I had the opportunity to be present at that signing. The CPA aimed to accomplish three things: One, redistribute 

both power and wealth in a less centralized structure; secondly, to 

transform the democratic process in Sudan; and three, to allow the 

people of Southern Sudan to decide on unity or separation. 

While we celebrate the triumph of democracy for South Sudan, 

many key provisions of the CPA remain unimplemented and conflict in the North rages on. There has not been democratic transformation in the North, and the popular consultations with Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile have been stymied. As time passes, the 

situation on the ground gets progressively worse. 

For nearly 9 years now, conflict has raged in Darfur and western 

Sudan. An estimated 450,000 people have been killed, over 1.9 million internally displaced, and 240,000 forced to flee neighboring 

Chad. Congress and the Bush administration recognized that what 

was going on was genocide and labeled it as such. 

Since then, multiple peace agreement attempts have failed. And 

to this day, violence continues. In late May, at the order of Omar 

al-Bashir, Sudanese armed forces invaded Abyei, killing over 100 

and displacing an estimated 100,000. Bashir’s forces then set their 

sights on the Southern Kordofan State. There were reports of mass 

graves and the targeted killing of the Nuba people. 

In early September, fighting also erupted between the SAF and 

SPLM in the Northern border state of Blue Nile. Together, both 

conflicts have displaced as many as 200,000 people, and Bashir’s 

regime has severely restricted access to the region for the U.N. and 

other humanitarian organizations. 

On September 23rd, the Satellite Sentinel Project showed evidence that armed forces from Khartoum were mobilizing a massive 

5

formation of troops, artillery and military aircraft to the region, 

raising concerns about an escalation possibly of the hostilities. 

These recent events prove that Government of Sudan is continuing 

to use the same deadly method that it has employed for years 

against its own people. 

Yet the people of Sudan continue to push for democracy and inclusive government. They took to the streets earlier this year in 

demonstrations inspired by the Arab Spring activities in neighboring countries. Bashir’s regime responded with extreme violence. 

There has also been increased cooperation between the various 

rebel groups dispersed throughout the country. Those groups are 

united under the mission to forcibly remove Bashir from power. 

The situation on the ground is fast approaching a tipping point 

that will likely result in civil war. 

It is against this backdrop that we take the opportunity today to 

reevaluate U.S. policy toward the Republic of Sudan. Two years 

ago, the Obama administration announced the policy, a Sudan policy that focused on three priorities: One, Darfur; the implementation of the CPA; and counterterrorism. Last year, a new policy was 

announced focusing on diplomatic engagement and the relaxation 

of sanctions and restrictions. The administration announced the 

plan to normalize relations; provide assistance and debt relief; seek 

congressional support for the removal of Sudan from the State 

Sponsor of Terrorism designation; support access to multilateral 

and bilateral assistance; remove executive branch sanctions; and 

seek congressional support to remove legislative sanctions. 

All this was conditioned upon full implementation of the CPA, 

progress in Darfur, and a commitment that Khartoum would not 

support terrorism. Not only have these contingencies not been met, 

but the situation is much worse. The U.S. and international community should develop a comprehensive and unified plan to reverse 

the pattern of grave crimes, human rights abuses and humanitarian crisis in Sudan and to support the democratic aspirations of 

the people of Sudan. 

I am interested in hearing from our witnesses about these issues. 

I am also interested in addressing the potential impact of the proposed cuts to the United States international affairs budget, including contributions to the United Nations, on our ability to provide 

humanitarian relief and bring stability to the region. 

Thank you, again, Mr. Chairman, for bringing this hearing 

today. 

And I look forward to hearing the testimony of the witnesses. 

Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Ranking Member Payne. 

Ms. Buerkle. 

Ms. BUERKLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Thank you very much for holding this very important meeting. 

And thank you to our witnesses here today. 

Many unresolved issues and disputes remain in the wake of the 

South Sudanese independence. Those issues exist because the new 

Comprehensive Peace Agreement has not been fully honored, nor 

has its goal been realized for the people of South Sudan, for those 

in Abyei, for those in Southern Kordofan and the Blue Nile. 

6

I believe that most of us in this room want the new Republic of 

South Sudan to flourish. We would also like to see stability, security, and freedom for the people of not only South Sudan but also 

North Sudan. 

As we discuss the situation in Sudan and South Sudan, we must 

not lose sight of the fact that failure to come to enforceable agreements over oil rights and border lines ultimately translates into 

more violence and greater loss of life. 

Again, thank you to our witnesses. I look forward to hearing your 

testimony. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Ms. Buerkle. 

And I would like to now welcome Ambassador Lyman, who was 

appointed U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan on March 31st. Immediately preceding his tenure as Special Envoy, he served as U.S. 

senior advisor of North-South negotiations, where he led the U.S. 

team focused on supporting ongoing negotiations between the parties to Sudan’s 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. 

Ambassador Lyman previously worked as an adjunct senior fellow for the Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was also an adjunct professor at Georgetown University 

from 1999 to 2003. He was executive director of the Global Interdependence Initiative at the Aspen Institute. 

His previous career in government included assignments as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs from 1981 to 

1986; U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, 1986 to 1989; Director of Refugee Programs from 1989 to 1992; U.S. Ambassador to South Africa from 1992 to 1995; and Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations from 1996 to 1998. From 2008 to 2010, he 

was a member of the African Advisory Committee to the United 

States Trade Representative. He began his government career with 

USAID and served as the director in Addis in Ethopia from 1976 

to 1978. 

He has his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard, and has published extensively. 

And I now turn the floor to Ambassador Lyman. 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE PRINCETON LYMAN, 

SPECIAL ENVOY FOR SUDAN, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE 

Ambassador LYMAN. Mr. Chairman, thank you so very much for 

holding this hearing. 

Thank you, Ranking Member Donald Payne, and Congresswoman Buerkle. 

Thanks so much because we do need this attention on the issues 

in Sudan. 

There is much to discuss today, and I would ask if you could to 

allow my full statement to be made part of the record. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Ambassador, without objection, so ordered. 

Ambassador LYMAN. Some of those issues include, as many of 

you have indicated, the issues still unresolved under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement; the fighting in Southern Kordofan 

and Blue Nile; and the situation within each of these countries, 

Sudan and South Sudan. 

7

While we have witnessed the peaceful independence of South 

Sudan, tensions remain between the two countries. Three post-CPA 

issues in particular remain to be resolved that could in themselves 

lead to confrontation or even conflict. These are the final status of 

Abyei; the financial arrangements in the oil sector; and disputed 

areas along the border. 

Negotiations on these issues are scheduled to resume this month 

in Addis Ababa under the auspices of the African Union High Level 

Implementation Panel, and we are urging the parties to come 

ready to address all three of these. In regard to Abyei, we are also 

particularly concerned that, despite agreement in June and reinforced in September on mutual withdrawal of all armed forces from 

that area, this has not taken place. And in particular, the Khartoum government has introduced conditions for its withdrawal 

when the agreement was very specifically that this would be an unconditional withdrawal once the Ethiopian peacekeepers were sufficiently in place, which they are. I and my staff will be present at 

these negotiations in Addis. 

But it is the fighting in the States of Southern Kordofan and 

Blue Nile that capture much of our attention at this time. Like the 

members of this subcommittee and many in the public that follow 

Sudan closely, we are angry and deeply upset at what has transpired there. The fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands of 

people, more have—tens of thousands have fled into Ethiopia and 

South Sudan. There are credible reports of serious human rights 

violations, including the bombing of civilian villages, kidnapping 

and murder of civilians taken from their home, and denial of desperately needed humanitarian assistance. We have denounced 

these acts and called for an independent investigation of these 

abuses. 

I regret that African members of the U.N. Security Council, 

along with China and Russia, have not supported that proposal. 

The U.N. Human Rights Council has agreed to renew the mandate 

of the Independent Expert on Human Rights for Sudan, but this 

is not sufficient. 

We have equally demanded that the Government of Sudan allow 

an international humanitarian organization to assess the needs of 

the people in these states and provide necessary assistance. We 

have pressed for this to take place regardless of whether a formal 

ceasefire or cessation of hostilities is in place, and we have reinforced that command most recently in our meeting with the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Washington last week. 

However, while we understand that the Government of South 

Sudan has historic ties with the SPLM in the North, the United 

States is deeply concerned that support to the SPLA fighters in 

Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile from the Government of South 

Sudan could further exacerbate the conflict in these two areas and 

run the risk of instigating direct military conflict with Sudan. The 

United States strongly urges the Government of South Sudan to 

use the influence it has to encourage both the SPLM-North and the 

Government of Sudan to reopen direct lines of communication and 

work to find a negotiated political solution. 

We note that President Kiir will be going later this week to a 

meeting with President Bashir, and we are pleased with that, and 

8

we hope that this offers an opportunity for the two of them to discuss exactly this matter. 

What is deeply disappointing is that this fighting was not necessary and could have been avoided. Underlying the conflict are 

unresolved political issues which were to be addressed as part of 

the CPA. Just a few months ago, I attended negotiations on these 

issues under the auspices of the AU High Level Panel. And in 

June, the Government of Sudan and the SPLM-North signed a 

framework agreement to address both the political and security 

issues in these two states. Yet that agreement was later rejected 

by the Government of Sudan. I commend the efforts of President 

Thabo Mbeki and the AU panel which he directs, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, and the Special Envoy of the U.N., with all of 

whom we worked very closely to reestablish these negotiations. 

I am ready to discuss further as we get into the Q&As of the situation in Darfur, which remains of major importance to us, but let 

me in these opening remarks make a particular point here that relates fundamentally to the outcome in Southern Kordofan, Blue 

Nile, and Darfur. Right now, Sudan is engaged in war in three 

parts of the country, the two areas of Southern Kordofan and Blue 

Nile, and in Darfur. This is happening at a time when Sudan faces 

particularly great economic challenges. While we often speak of the 

conflicts in these areas independently, at the root of all of them is 

the question of how Sudan will be governed in the future. This is 

a decision for the people of Sudan, not for outsiders. But for Sudan, 

the time is right for addressing this question. 

The government, in fact, recognizes that in the wake of the 

South’s independence and the end of the government of national 

unity, a new constitution is needed. And it has promised a broadly 

participatory process in creating it. Therein lies the opportunity to 

address the fundamental issues that have driven conflict in Sudan 

for many years, issues of power and wealth sharing, of human 

rights and the role of democratic institutions, such as political parties and the judiciary. A broadbased national dialogue on these 

issues would offer the promise of a new day in Sudan, one in which 

all parts of the country and all of its people would benefit. 

There are some in the armed movements and others and elsewhere outside Sudan that have come to the conclusion that such 

a dialogue and process is impossible while the present government 

is in power in Khartoum. And they have committed themselves to 

seeking a military overthrow of the regime. But it is our belief that 

such a conclusion might well be a prescription for years, even decades, of renewed civil war in Sudan. Tens of thousands, maybe 

hundreds of thousands of Sudanese could die in such a war, and 

the outcome may not be what the protagonists had desired. 

Instead, we believe that there is real need for political dialogue 

on all of these issues and still opportunities thereby for peaceful 

collaborative change. In all our dealings with the armed movements, we have urged them to develop a political platform that 

would lay the foundation for their participation in such a process. 

And we continue to urge the Government of Sudan to cease hostilities, engage in dialogue, and put forward its plan for a new constitutional development. 

9

Finally, Mr. Chairman, let me turn to South Sudan. When President Obama met President Salva Kiir at the United Nations General Assembly last week, he emphasized that we are committed to 

assisting the South Sudanese as they face the responsibility and 

obligations of independence. U.S. assistance programs are already 

helping to support health care, education, infrastructure, good government, and economic diversification. 

The U.S. sanctions that apply to Sudan do not apply to South 

Sudan, and we urge American investors to take advantage of the 

opportunities there. 

However, critical to U.S. investment, is a commitment on the 

part of the Government of South Sudan to transparency, accountability, and inclusive governance. We welcome, therefore, President 

Kiir’s commitments to his people and to the world to combat corruption and to hold those responsible for it accountable. The key 

will be an implementation of those promises with the full political 

backing of his government. 

The Government of South Sudan should also begin the first stage 

of the permanent constitutional development process and ensure 

that it is inclusive, participatory and transparent. 

Further, the basic rights of those currently residing in South 

Sudan must not be ignored. The United States is concerned about 

allegations of human rights abuse, perpetrated by the security 

services of South Sudan and particularly transgressions by the police. 

We are also gravely concerned about continuing reports of child 

soldiers in South Sudan. We have sent strong diplomatic messages 

to both the civilian government and the armed forces regarding 

this issue, and we are collaborating with the Government of South 

Sudan to address it. We will continue also to coordination with the 

United Nations’ mission in South Sudan and the SPLA to prevent 

the recruitment of any child soldiers and to ensure that all child 

soldiers that are there are immediately demobilized. 

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman and members, the United States remains committed to seeing peace prevail in Sudan and an environment in which freedom and economic growth is there for all Sudanese. Right now, the situation is deeply worrisome. But we must 

persevere in bringing an end to the nightmare of war, depravation 

and suffering that has gone on for far too long in this part of Africa. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Lyman follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Thank you so very much, Ambassador Lyman. 

Let me just begin the questioning. We have a second panel, as 

you know, and some of the statements are, while supportive in 

some ways, are very critical in others. 

Let me just focus on John Prendergast, who has been before this 

committee many times, both when Mr. Payne chaired the committee as well as when I have chaired the committee. And he 

makes a very important point, and I would just appreciate your response to it. He asked the question, how could U.S. policy toward 

South Sudan over the last decade been so successful and the policy 

toward Sudan to be such an abject failure? He says, contrast this 

with the U.S. policy toward the North after he talks about what 

he actually did in a bipartisan way vis-a`-vis the south. And he 

notes that U.S. policy is never focused on the fundamental issue of 

abuse and total concentration of power in the hands of a minority. 

American diplomats, he writes, or will testify, have ineffectively 

chased disparate peace processes down disparate rabbit holes in 

Darfur, Abyei, the Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile State and the east, 

instead of focusing on a comprehensive solution to Sudan’s authoritarian system of government. Negotiators have invested heavily in 

separate regional peace processes which have played right into 

Khartoum strategy of divide and conquer. None of the peace deals 

that have been struck have never been implemented, no attempt at 

justice or accountability has ever been seriously supported, including that of the International Criminal Court. The result is an unmitigated human rights and governance disaster. And he calls for 

a fundamental change in U.S. policy toward Sudan and makes a 

number of recommendations, including draconian financial sanctions against officials responsible for the attacks against civilians, 

a kind of micro targeting of sanctions, which I think would be very 

helpful. 

I would note—and I know you know this—both Bashir has been 

to China in June, Turkey before that, and I know the European 

Union leadership asked that Turkey deliver him, Bashir, to the 

ICC at the Hague, which did not happen. And China, obviously, 

didn’t do anything either. An additional question in response to 

that analysis of U.S. policy, did we talk to the Chinese? Did we ask 

them to? We are signatory, even though we have not ratified the 

ICC, did we also convey to Beijing our concern that they hand over 

Bashir? 

Ambassador LYMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me address 

several parts of those comments. 

I would just say at the beginning, of course, we can’t say that all 

efforts of the peace process have been a failure because one of the 

main elements of the CPA was to secure the peaceful independence 

of South Sudan, and that did occur. And when I began——

Mr. SMITH. He was talking about the north, not——

Ambassador LYMAN. Peace agreements for the north only. Okay. 

Okay. Well, that is different. 

Mr. SMITH. He was saying that is the model, and we seem to 

have been chasing, you know, a disparate strategy vis-a`-vis——

Ambassador LYMAN. That goes to a point that I addressed in my 

opening remarks. Clearly, the fundamental issue that has created 

conflict in many parts of Sudan, the two areas that we have menVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:20 Feb 29, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00021 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\AGH\100411\70583 HFA PsN: SHIRL
18

tioned, Darfur, is this whole question of governance, this whole 

question of power sharing, of human rights, et cetera. 

That is an issue that is fundamental. The question is, what is 

our role in that regard? To be candid, the government of Khartoum 

thinks that the only interest we have is in regime change. They tell 

me that all the time. 

What we really want to do is to encourage the kind of change 

that is absolutely necessary for Sudan. 

We have sanctions on Sudan. We have individual sanctions on 

people that have perpetrated human rights. We have had sanctions 

in place for 8 years. They are some of the most heavy sanctions we 

have on any country in the world. They have had some effect. 

They, obviously, haven’t had the effect that people would have 

wanted. 

And what motivates the government of Khartoum is not so much 

the sanctions as their own view of retaining power as they see it 

in Sudan. 

But I think all of us concerned care about these fundamental 

issues of governance, and encouraging that kind of change is all we 

can do. But reaching inside and forcing that change is something 

we probably can’t do. 

Now, the attitude of other countries is important here. Yes, we 

have said to China and to others that they shouldn’t invite the 

President, and we have made that point in every case. China has 

a very important role in Sudan, and we have urged China to use 

that influence both to avoid further confrontation with the South 

over the oil issues and to follow a peaceful process of political negotiation in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile. 

I think they have conveyed those messages, but I cannot tell you 

how strongly or in what fashion they delivered them. But they say 

they have delivered those messages. 

On the attitude of our European friends, I think they are very 

much on the same wavelength as we are. 

But when we go into the U.N. Security Council, if you were to 

want to get more multilateral sanctions or, as I mentioned, even 

an independent human rights investigation, you find that there 

isn’t unanimity of that approach. 

Mr. SMITH. Which countries are objecting? 

Ambassador LYMAN. I would say the African countries, South Africa, Nigeria, as well as China and Russia objected to an independent investigation of——

Mr. SMITH. Nigeria is the chair of the Security Council. 

Ambassador LYMAN. They are now chairing it. The issue came up 

just before. So getting the kind of unanimity in the international 

community on such international issues is an upward battle. 

They have their own reasons. They take a different view of how 

to influence Sudan. 

So we work on those issues. We continue to push for an independent investigation of human rights, for example. We try to mobilize all of the other countries to emphasize the need for humanitarian access, and I think everybody is concerned about how Khartoum responds to these fundamental issues of governance. 

Mr. SMITH. How hard have we pushed back with the allies and 

friends who have looked askance to some extent, like Nigeria? We 

19

are close to Nigeria, and we are close to South Africa. I, frankly, 

liked what Mr. Prendergast said when he talked about draconian 

sanctions. We usually use the word draconian to talk about the bad 

guys, but we need to become draconian ourselves in at least isolating—and I know you know this, and you have given them no 

quarter either. But you are not everywhere in our Government, 

and so the thought is, how hard do we push it at the U.N.? 

Ambassador LYMAN. I know at the U.N., our permanent representative, Susan Rice, has certainly pressed these issues very 

hard, and we have addressed them when we meet with them. And 

it was true in our meetings with them up in New York during the 

General Assembly, and our Ambassadors raised them. 

They take a different view. For example, the African countries, 

Nigeria, South Africa, argue that there should be more incentives 

rather than sanctions, that they should be given more rewards for 

having gone along with the secession of the South. So they have 

a different perception of what would work to move—than we do 

and they feel very strongly about that. 

The Russians and the Chinese in general don’t like to support 

sanctions. So I think it is a very fundamental disagreement as to 

how you approach the issue in Sudan, and we keep working with 

them. 

Now, we do work together on the negotiation, the Africa Union 

High Level Panel plays a major role in bringing about negotiations 

trying to find peaceful solutions. We work very closely with them. 

And I was in Beijing just recently to urge the Chinese to play 

a more active role in these areas. 

So it is a question of working with them where we can find common ground, recognizing that they take a different approach to how 

to motivate the Government in Sudan. 

Mr. SMITH. Did anyone in our Government ask Hu Jintao or anybody below him to arrest and to facilitate the arrest of Bashir? I 

mean, as we all know, Bashir did not go to Ankara because of the 

pressure. Another reason was——

Ambassador LYMAN. We did convey to the Chinese Government 

that we thought it was wrong for them to invite President Bashir. 

That came from the White House. I don’t have exact details. But 

I know that message was conveyed. 

Mr. SMITH. Could you provide that for the committee? It could 

be very helpful to have that, because the stronger and the higher 

up, the better, obviously. 

Let me just ask you with regards to slavery, we will hear from 

Ker Deng very shortly, who, as you know, Christian Solidarity effectuated his rescue. Ellen Ratner, a journalist, helped to mobilize 

the effort to bring him here, and he recently got some significant 

surgery. And we will hear from him shortly. But he in his testimony said, I was treated worse than the animals I slept with. Like 

them, I was property. I was a slave held in Northern Sudan. But 

the animals weren’t beaten every day. I was, every single day with 

a horsewhip; sometimes on my front, sometimes on my back, sometimes with my clothes on, sometimes not, but every day. The animals were fed every day, but I wasn’t. And then he talks about how 

the chili peppers were rubbed in his eyes as he was upside down. 

Cruel, cruel torture, making him blind. And thankfully, the interVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:20 Feb 29, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00023 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\AGH\100411\70583 HFA PsN: SHIRL
20

vention—this will, we believe, lead to him regaining his eyesight 

and is in the process of healing. Can you speak to the issue of slavery? How many do you think? What are we doing to help free the 

slaves in Sudan? 

Ambassador LYMAN. As you indicated, you have put a spotlight 

on this issue for some years, and it is—it is not only a tremendous 

human rights issue, but it is a source of a great deal of lingering 

bitterness among communities that have suffered. I found this in 

several trips to Sudan; that it remains a source of great bitterness. 

Some of the type of attacks in slavery were ended when the civil 

war ended and the South was able to gain its independence, but 

we still have people who are held. And we still have instances of 

it occurring in other contexts, between groups that engage in raids 

on other ethnic groups, sometimes in South Sudan, and capture 

children or others and keep them. So it is an ongoing issue, not 

quite the scale before, but still an ongoing issue. It is part of that 

general need in Sudan to establish a constitution that protects 

human rights, that investigates wrongdoing and brings people to 

accountability. That doesn’t exist today. 

And it is the fundamental issue that divides the people of Sudan. 

Whether it is considered—felt to be ethnic, whether it is felt to be 

political, et cetera, when people are arrested, when people are 

enslaved, when people are dragged out of their homes, this is the 

fundamental issue in Sudan. 

And what we are urging and hoping is that there are people in 

Khartoum who say, this is not a path we can stay on, this is not 

a path that will survive, that we have got to change the political 

system. There are people inside the government of Khartoum who 

recognize this. The question is, how will they come forward and 

create a process that people have confidence in? 

We don’t see it yet, but we think it is terribly important. Otherwise, there are going to be situations like Southern Kordofan, like 

Blue Nile, continuing trouble in Darfur. These are the fundamental 

issues. 

Mr. SMITH. With deep respect, I would ask that you raise the 

profile of this labor issue. When I held that first hearing—and I did 

subsequent briefings and hearings—we even heard from a woman 

who told the story about how the door of her small home was 

kicked in, her sons were taken, were forced—given Islamic names, 

forced into Islam, and she was beaten senseless. And she stood 

there—or stood here and told her story. It is a tool of war, just as 

rape is being used as a hideous method of war, so is that. So I just 

would ask you to raise the profile of it if you would. 

Ambassador LYMAN. I will. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Payne. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much, Ambassador Lyman. 

As we have seen the problem in South Kordofan and the Blue 

Nile, what solutions—there has been criticism because it has been 

alleged that the SPLA supported their comrades in South Kordofan 

when they were being attacked by the Sudan armed forces. As you 

know, the SPLM in South Kordofan were aligned with the South, 

and it would sort of be unconscionable I suppose to allow the Government of Sudan to continue the atrocities they were doing without expecting that SPLM from South Sudan would respond. 

21

What is the U.S. expecting from the SPLM when the Government of Sudan is bombing and, as you know, went house to house, 

and what do you suggest as a resolution? Of course, we want to see 

a cessation of hostilities, but without the SPLM being able to protect themselves in South Kordofan, they are sort of left in an untenable position. What does the U.S. suggest that they do there? 

Ambassador LYMAN. Well, Congressman. There is clearly a historical link and important links from the civil war between the 

SPLM and the SPLA in South Sudan and the elements in the 

North. But now that South Sudan is an independent country, this 

is an issue that takes place in another country; it takes place in 

Sudan across the border. And while we certainly understand those 

linkages, we don’t think it is wise to encourage the idea on the 

SPLA side in those states anymore than on the government side 

that there is a military solution to this problem. And there are 

some who do feel that is the answer. This is the beginning of the 

revolution. And what we see is continued fighting with neither side 

being able to achieve a military victory. 

So what we would like the Government of South Sudan to do—

and I think President Kiir’s visit this week with President Bashir 

offers an important opportunity—is to convey to both sides that 

there isn’t a military solution in this area, that there must be political negotiations, that Government of Sudan will help in any way 

it can, the Government of South Sudan, to encourage and facilitate 

those negotiations. But we don’t want this to become another 

North-South war. And for the South to engage militarily in those 

states does run that risk, and that would widen the war in a major 

way. And it would have consequences that I would not like to anticipate. 

So what we are asking of South Sudan is, be vocal on behalf of 

the fact that neither side can win a military battle here, that the 

fighting should come to an end and there should be political negotiations and to offer its good office in any other way it can to help 

bring that about. 

Mr. PAYNE. Well, the Government of Sudan has been unwilling 

to allow outsiders into Southern Kordofan. Where do the Ethiopian 

troops stand at this point? 

Ambassador LYMAN. The Ethiopian troops are in Abyei. They are 

not in Southern Kordofan or Blue Nile. They have taken up their 

position in Abyei. And even though they aren’t at full strength, 

they are at sufficient operational capability that they are arguing 

that the withdrawal from Abyei should now proceed immediately. 

The force commander is very good. He is very capable. And he has 

been urging the sides to adhere to the agreement, which is that 

there would be an unconditional withdrawal. And we have supported him in that regard, and this issue will come up at the U.N. 

Security Council on Thursday. And we see no reason for the delay 

that has taken place. There were various delays in this process. 

But right now it is the government of Khartoum that is not withdrawing its troops, and it is raising conditions that are not in the 

agreement. So we have to press for that. 

But on Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile, there is no international presence. The government has not allowed it. And that is 

one of our great disadvantages. Because even to get a good handle 

22

on the humanitarian situation, let alone the human rights situation, we don’t have independent verification there. And we have 

pressed the government very hard on this—Government of 

Sudan—very hard on this, the humanitarian issues are becoming 

overwhelming. And they do themselves no good by denying humanitarian access. And pressures are building up in this regard. People 

are looking at alternative ways of getting humanitarian assistance 

there. That is not in the interest of the Government of Sudan. 

So we think the humanitarian access issue is a top priority, and 

we think they ought to allow it. And I am sure that the SPLM will 

open its areas to any independent international organization that 

comes in. 

Mr. PAYNE. I agree that I don’t think that continued hostilities, 

that it is certainly not going to lead to anything but worse conditions. However, the Government of Sudan refuses to allow even humanitarian assistance. And it is true, I was mixing Abyei and Ethiopia up with Southern Kordofan. But if the Government of Sudan 

continues to refuse to allow there to be some protection, you know, 

they are sort of baiting the SPLM if they, once again, have attacks 

on them. And I think that we should certainly also urge them 

strongly—I am sure you will—that there needs to be some protection from a neutral party in Southern Kordofan to protect the 

SPLM-North that are there. 

As has been mentioned, we find that Bashir definitely refuses to 

cooperate. We feel that there perhaps even needs to be more pressure. I know there is some thinking in the Department of State 

that we should give kudos to the Government of Sudan for allowing 

the separation. But it seems to me that when we talk about easing 

sanctions as was—not by you, but by the previous Special Envoy, 

I just think that that is really going in the wrong direction because 

this government just seems like they simply defy all logic and just 

refuses to come with any kind of solutions. 

I know that there was a meeting in Uganda that you recently 

had. And I wonder, were there any kind of breakthroughs in your 

negotiations there? 

Ambassador LYMAN. Well, thank you. I just pick up on another 

point you made, and it goes to a question you asked earlier, Mr. 

Chairman. When we talk to other governments, they often take the 

position that we haven’t offered enough rewards to Khartoum. Our 

position has been, look, sanctions are there for a reason; they are 

there to change behavior, to signal the need for change. And the 

normalization process requires change on their part in terms of fulfilling the CPA and certainly ending the fighting now going on in 

Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile. Other countries say to us, we 

should have given them more at the beginning, but that hasn’t 

been our policy. 

We think that the government faces now very severe economic problems. There is a $2 billion deficit in their budget for the balance of this year, $4 billion next year, because of the loss of oil revenues. They need to address these fundamental economic issues. 

And that means turning away from this war and these wars and 

engaging in a different set of both economic and political policies. 

But coming to your question about Kampala. I went to Kampala 

to meet with members of the SPLM-North, Yasir Arman and Abdul 

23

Aziz, and also with an element of the JEM, the Justice Equality 

Movement, from Darfur. And the point of those meetings, Mr. Congressman, was to say to them, what is your political platform? It 

is one thing to say you are against the regime or whatever, but 

what is the political platform that you are putting out there that 

if there was an opportunity for a political dialogue, what do you 

represent? It can’t just be, I am against the regime. It has to be 

for something. And I think you will see in some of the material 

coming out from the SPLM-North more along those lines of what 

a political platform would be. 

In relationship to Darfur, we now have a split taking place in 

JEM. Khalil Ibrahim has come back from Libya, apparently with 

a lot of weapons, and we foresee further fighting in Darfur. But another part of JEM has split off and said we are prepared to go to 

Doha and do further negotiations. So we have a split there. And 

we are trying to pursue a process whereby the government implements some of the things they have promised to do, but where the 

armed movements say we are prepared to negotiate, here is our political platform. 

Mr. PAYNE. I guess my time has expired, but there is continued 

frustration out of Darfur. I will be having a meeting in my district 

just this Friday coming up with the Darfur Coalition. And they are 

certainly disappointed at the lack of progress. I know that a JEM 

person has been appointed Vice President. But I am not sure that 

is going to solve the question. I wish that—and just I know that 

the oil sector is going to impact on South Sudan. One of the problems with U.S. businessmen is that they are confused. It is not that 

they are confused, it is they say our State Department—not you 

per se; everyone but you—are confused because they get confusing 

answers. 

And so Treasury says one thing, USAID says something else, Department of State says something else, National Security says 

something else. When do you think the policy will be clarified and 

we might have a single policy? 

Ambassador LYMAN. Sometimes I get confused. The first point, 

as I mentioned, is that sanctions generally do not apply to South 

Sudan. 

Mr. PAYNE. Right. 

Ambassador LYMAN. The issue in the oil sector is to determine 

when investments there have a benefit for the North, on which 

there are still sanctions. And quite frankly, the Treasury, and this 

is not a criticism of the Treasury, they have to issue guidelines 

along these lines, because a license will be required. What we 

would like American companies to do is to make application for 

those licenses, because that will help clarify what the dimensions 

of investments might look like and how we would structure the licenses to meet the requirements. We want American companies 

there. We want them in the oil sector, as well as others. And it is 

tricky, with all respect to the people working on it. But it would 

help. We only have one license request from an American oil company. So if we could get more, we would have a caseload on which 

to say, okay, these are the guidelines that make sense. 

Mr. PAYNE. Let me thank you very much. I recall about a decade 

ago we talked about a no-fly zone for Sudan that John Prendergast 

24

and some of us supported it, Joe Biden. Perhaps if we had had that 

no-fly zone then, perhaps we would have had a Libya-type situation, where we don’t have a dictator like Ghadafi anymore. Maybe 

Bashir would have been gone by now. But we didn’t do it, so we 

are still stuck with him. But thank you very much. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Payne. Mr. Lyman, just 

one final question. Dr. Prunier of the Atlantic Council does, in his 

seven recommendations, ask that the feasibility of a no-fly zone be 

looked at. Is that something that is under consideration? 

Ambassador LYMAN. It isn’t under active consideration. I would 

just say this about it, and you can draw a little bit of experience 

from Libya. If you had a no-fly zone, you would still face a lot of 

artillery. And then the question is what do you do next? And Sudan 

has a lot of artillery, and it can be just as damaging. So the question is do we want to go down the path that way? And we have 

not indicated we want to go down that path. And it would be very 

complicated. And we would be alone. So I think right now, as far 

as the administration is concerned, it is to avoid going down a path 

of further war. We think the government needs to reconsider its rejection of the framework agreement. It needs to come back to negotiations, as they are being urged to do, and bring this to a halt before it gets totally out of hand. 

I want to say just one quick thing about Darfur. We haven’t had 

a chance to talk about it. I just want to say a word about it, because Congressman Payne has raised it. It is a frustrating situation. Because you don’t have a CPA, you don’t have a structure. We 

have a peace agreement between the government and one of six 

now, six different armed groups, a split LJM, a split JEM, a split 

SLA. And you have some interested in negotiations, some saying 

we are not going to negotiate, we are just going to fight. So what 

we are trying to do is work on several different fronts here. One 

is the government has signed this agreement with LJM. They said 

they are going to set up a land commission, a human rights commission, a compensation commission. We are saying set them up. 

Let’s see if you are really going to do these things and demonstrate 

that you are really going to move on these things. That might affect the situation. We are saying to the armed movements, as I 

mentioned when I met with JEM in Kampala, what is your political platform? You are fighting. What are you fighting for? What 

is the political platform that you might be able to sit down and negotiate? 

And finally, we are saying to the government, you can’t say just 

because you signed with LJM, or one element of LJM, that everybody else has to sign this agreement, there is no further negotiations. That is not realistic. You have got to keep the door open to 

further negotiation. Now, it is not a perfect situation by any means, 

and I am very worried about renewed fighting. But we got to work 

on all three of these right now, because we have such a disparate 

situation in that area. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Ambassador, thank you so very much for your 

testimony, for giving this subcommittee the benefit of your counsel 

and your recommendations, and your take on the situation, and for 

your leadership. 

25

Ambassador LYMAN. Thank you. Thank you, Congressman 

Payne. 

Mr. SMITH. I would like now ask our second panel if they would 

make their way to the witness stand. We will be beginning first 

with Mr. Ker Deng, a former slave from Sudan. He is a victim of 

modern day slavery. As a toddler, he and his mother were captured 

by Arab slave raiders who destroyed his village, and massacred the 

men. He grew up under brutal conditions, eating the same grains 

as the slave master’s horses. 

When a goat escaped on one occasion, his master hung him upside down from a tree and rubbed chili peppers in his eyes, causing 

him to go blind. Mr. Deng was freed by Christian Solidarity International, and hopes that his recent cornea surgery will help him 

to regain his sight. His mother, along with thousands of others in 

southern Sudan, remains enslaved. I would note I mentioned 

Christian Solidarity. John Eibner, the president of CSI, is here. Dr. 

Julia Haller, chief of retinal surgery at the famed Wills Eye Institute, who actually performed the surgery, is here. Mark 

Ackermann, president of Lighthouse International, is also here. 

They are working on the rehabilitation. And Diane Gooch, who is 

an activist, and who actually traveled to Sudan and has worked for 

his release. And then just to introduce her, Ellen Ratner, by unanimous consent will be part of our panel. 

And I thank Mr. Payne for his willingness to accommodate this 

activist. An accomplished journalist, who works with Talk Radio 

News Service and Talkers Magazine, she has a long and distinguished career in the media, and she was at the news conference 

earlier. She became an activist upon attending slave liberations 

with Christian Solidarity International. And she worked very, very 

hard to help Mr. Deng be here today, to get out of the country, get 

his surgery, and be here today. And she will join us on the panel 

as the fourth witness. 

We will hear from Dr. Prunier, who is a nonresident senior fellow 

with the Atlantic Council’s Michael S. Ansari Africa Center. He 

previously served as an adviser to the French Government, as well 

as a consultant for the U.S. State and Defense Departments, various European and African governments, as well as private companies. Dr. Prunier also served as a senior researcher at France’s 

largest research organization, and directed a center for Ethiopian 

Studies in Addis. He has published over 200 articles and a dozen 

books, many of them focused on genocide in Africa, and especially 

in Darfur. 

Then we will hear from Mr. John Prendergast, who heads up the 

Enough Project. A human rights activist, best selling author, and 

co-founder of the Enough Project, an initiative to end genocide and 

crimes against humanity. He has worked for the Clinton administration, the State Department, and in Congress. He has also 

worked for the National Intelligence Council, UNICEF, Human 

Rights Watch, the International Crisis Group, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He has helped fund schools in Darfurian refugee 

camps, and helped launch the Satellite Sentinel Project with 

George Clooney. Mr. Prendergast has worked for peace in Africa for 

over 25 years, and has been a frequent and a very welcomed and 

26

very esteemed witness before this subcommittee and the full committee. And I thank you for being here as well. 

I would like to now begin with Mr. Deng. We are going to show 

a taped video with Dr. Garang, and then we will go to Mr. Deng. 

[Video shown.] 

Mr. SMITH. We are joined on the subcommittee by a long-time activist for peace and reconciliation and justice in Sudan, Congressman Frank Wolf. Chairman Wolf? 

Mr. WOLF. I just appreciate you, Mr. Smith, having the hearing. 

Mr. Payne. And you know, I just came to, you know, just support 

you. I guess Mr. Lyman has left. But this really can’t continue. 

This has been going on for so long. But I just want to thank you 

and Mr. Payne. With that, I will end. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much. Mr. Deng. 

STATEMENT OF MR. KER ALEU DENG, EMANCIPATED SLAVE 

FROM THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH SUDAN 

Mr. DENG. Hello. 

Mr. PAYNE. Hello. 

Mr. DENG. I am here today to tell you about my life experience 

as a slave, and how my life has changed since I got out of slavery. 

I am happy to be here right now to share this moment with you. 

I used to hear a lot about Washington, but now I am here. Even 

though I do not fully see everything around me, I feel it. 

I love American food, broccoli. 

When I was in the North, I never had some meals like I had here 

in the U.S. I didn’t have good nutrition. So when I came here I was 

not used to eating every single day, three times a day, and I was 

worried about my weight. Now that I have been very fortunate to 

get out of the situation, I still think about those who are in the 

same situation I was in. All I want, I just want them to get out 

of the situation and have freedom just like I am now. 

So when I got out of Zacharia’s house, who was my master, one 

day it just came to me that I have to go. Now I am free. I have 

to go back to my homeland, the South. When I was at Zacharia’s, 

it was something unimaginable. Now, every now and then I have 

a relapse. Every single day it plays in my head. But I have hope 

that everything will be okay from now onward. So I am very happy 

to be meeting with all these people that I have always never 

thought I could meet. 

When I was in the North with Zacharia, I was basically like his 

goats. Like every single night I spent the night with his goats. And 

my mother would sleep in the garden. Every single day I warned 

Jalaliah. They give me a name, Habagah, and they made me to be 

a Muslim. While some of the people in the South were Christian, 

and I didn’t even know that. So when I came back to the South, 

I decided to go to church. 

You have seen in me now what happened to me and how my situation was. You have heard it all. And it is not me alone. It didn’t 

just happen to me alone. Many, many people in the same situation, 

they don’t have the power, the means to get out of that. And they 

give us, they call them Jengae. That is the name. So it was very 

difficult. When you are in that situation you try to get out of it, 

27

but you are also afraid. If you try to escape, you are going to get 

caught along the way before you reach the South. 

So we stayed, and my mother would teach me my Dinka language, even though Zacharia prohibited us to speak our own language. Most of the time we speak Arabic. He taught us to pray in 

a Muslim way. You don’t have any other God with this. So many 

other people are in the same situation. So Zacharia would take his 

kids to school, but not me. The school was far. I couldn’t, maybe 

even if I wanted to sneak out and try to go to school. So I just 

heard about it, there is something called school. I didn’t even know 

there were markets. I didn’t see any other person who looks like 

me. 

So after Zacharia had tortured me, got me blinded, and I was no 

longer useful to him, I got into the care of the other man called 

Bakit. Even though he tried to give me good care, he didn’t have 

medicines or anything like that to treat my eyes. So when people 

got me out of slavery and went back to Sudan, I got along with 

them. I just wanted to come back to the South. So we walked a 

long way from the North back to the South many months. 

So when we came back to the South, we gathered in the same 

place. So people came and saw us, asked us where we were coming 

from. We didn’t even know where to go and how to start our new 

life in the South. And then the Christian Solidarity, that is when 

they came in. We were hungry. So they tried to feed us, give us 

some food, provide. And the same organization got me to America 

today. So Momma Chicken is right here, the one who brought me 

here. I am very happy for the job that she has done in my life. I 

wouldn’t have been here today without her. 

I just wanted to let you know that there are still many people 

in the same situation I was in. They don’t have the means to get 

out of there, but they want so badly to get out. Like during Ramadan, they were never given a chance to, and many horrible things 

were done to them. If they had the power, they would have left a 

long time ago from the North. So many things, I have no words to 

describe everything that went on with us in the North. I know that 

you have the power to get them out of there so they can have their 

freedom like I am now. I am very happy. And thank you all. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Deng follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Mr. Deng, thank you so very much for your testimony, which gives all of us a great deal of hope. But with so many 

people still remaining in Sudan enslaved, the challenge is formidable. And we need to, all of us need to do more to liberate those 

slaves. Without objection, your written testimony will be made a 

part of the record. And you are a very, very articulate man. Knowing that you couldn’t read your testimony, all of that was done extemporaneous. So thank you so much again for your testimony. Dr. 

Prunier. 

STATEMENT OF GE ́ RARD PRUNIER, PH.D., NONRESIDENT SENIOR FELLOW, MICHAEL S. ANSARI AFRICA CENTER, ATLANTIC COUNCIL 

Mr. PRUNIER. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Payne, distinguished members of the subcommittee, I would like to thank you 

for the opportunity to testify today on the current situation in the 

Sudan, and to comment, perhaps, on the policy options that would 

be available to the U.S. in this respect. I am not a humanitarian, 

I am not a political activist, but I am an academic. So perhaps I 

will take this opportunity to try to go back into the deeper background of the present situation. 

What we are witnessing now, stretching from south Darfur all 

the way to Blue Nile, is not a violation of the peace or humanitarian crisis; it is something much bigger, much more serious. After 

56 years of conflict, this is probably the last stage of a fundamental 

and massive restructuration of the very basis of Sudanese polity. 

Sudan has never been a nation-state. It is an arbitrarily cut chunk 

of the African continent, which its Ottoman conquerors slapped together during the 19th century. It was a mixture of three, not two, 

basic strands of humanity, cultural Arabs, African Muslims, and 

African animists who later converted to Christianity. That polity 

was dominated by the first group of people, to the detriment of the 

two others under the Turks, under the British, and since 1956, 

under the independent Government of the Sudan Republic. 

The religious contradictions appeared to loom very large, and 

were, at first, thought to be the main, if not the only ones, leading 

to two extremely long civil wars, the first one between 1955 and 

1972, the later one between 1983 and 2002. But one thing many 

observers often missed at the time, the Islamic culture was, in 

terms of size, the dominant one, but the Arab culture was not. In 

other words, the Arabs are a minority in the Sudan. And the fact 

that the Muslims are a majority, the two were often confounded. 

This put the Black African Muslims in a tremendously ambiguous 

position. During the first war, they sided with the Arabs, and most 

of the fighters, most of the soldiers fighting in the South killing 

Black Africans were other Black Africans, not Arabs. But during 

the second war, the clear message of guerilla leader John Garang 

de Mabior insisted on culture and economic marginalization, not religion. Garang was not fighting for the independence of Southern 

Sudan, he was fighting for more equal, more democratic 

restructuration of the whole of the Sudan. 

As a result of this new ideology, African Muslims switched progressively from siding with the Arab minority to aligning themselves with the Southerners, either by joining the SPLA directly, 

31

as was the case of the Nuba in Southern Kordofan, or else by starting anti-Khartoum insurrections of their own in Darfur and along 

the Bija populations of the east. 

The problem came to a head in January 2005, when the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was signed, because this agreement 

treated the conflict and its solution in a binary manner. On the one 

side, the Arab North versus the Southern Africans. On the one 

side, the Arab Muslims versus the Christian Blacks. But what 

about the problem of those populations who were Black Africans 

and Muslims? Northerners, but fighting alongside the South? The 

agreement had nothing for them apart from a very vague mention 

of popular consultations, which carried no political weight, and carried no legal obligation in the postwar period. What we see now is 

a refusal of that very large section of the Sudanese population, basically one-third of it, to fit on the Procrustean bed, where their 

hopes and aspirations are supposed to die. 

One-third of the population neglected and made invisible by the 

CPA, in spite of the benefits it could have for the South, is revolting and fighting from Darfur to the Blue Nile Province by way of 

Southern Kordofan. It started with the nonresolution of the Darfur 

war in the unrealistic Doha process, which has not put an end to 

the conflict at all. It went on with the attempt at disarming the 

Nuba SPLA forces in Southern Kordofan, which was legal from the 

point of view of the CPA, but which was a completely unrealistic 

move because these people were the guarantors of their community. And it ended in June with the government attacking the 

elected SPLM governor of Blue Nile, Malik Agar, in an attempt at 

reducing any manifestation of the political force with which it was 

faced. 

This now means open war from the border with Chad to the border with Ethiopia, clear across the whole country. Considering the 

situation, what are the possibilities now open for a constructive 

U.S. approach to this massive structural crisis? First of all, I will 

have to disagree with the special envoy. Getting Khartoum—but, of 

course, in his position this is quite normal that he would say so—

getting Khartoum to genuinely negotiate peace is an unlikely prospect. Why? The present regime is, after 56 years, the last rampart, 

the last protection of Arab domination in the Sudan. And its track 

record hardly suggests flexibility and adaptability. 

The second point I would mention—there are seven of them—is 

that Sudan’s neighbors probably have a better access to the problem, particularly in the case of Ethiopia and Uganda. Their initiatives to attenuate the effects of the conflict should be helped and 

supported. 

The third point is the ways and the means to help the victims, 

because the war will go on. Regardless of what we might want, the 

war is the last resort of the people who have been completely 

marginalized as a result of the CPA, and it will go on. So ways and 

means to help the victims, regardless of Khartoum’s claims about 

the fact that they are bandits or rebels, should be helped and 

furthered. 

The fourth point is that consultations with the Juba government 

and military support to the Southern Sudanese authority are necessary to help them guard themselves against Northern destaVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:20 Feb 29, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00035 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\AGH\100411\70583 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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bilization attempts. These are going on now, and they will go on. 

They are a kind of quid pro quo of what is going on in the strip 

between North and South. 

The fifth point is to discourage Eritrean intervention in the region. It has already occurred with the help that Eritrea has tried 

to bring to the George Athor group. We have seen what the Eritreans have done in Somalia. It is still going on in Somalia. And 

very likely, given the desperation of the Eritrean regime, they will 

try to fiddle with that situation in a most nefarious way. 

The sixth point is that there should be contacts with the SPLMNorth. And I was extremely happy to realize that the special envoy 

had taken the important step in Kampala of meeting with them. 

Because their representativity should be heightened, their visibility 

should be heightened, and they should be helped, also, with the 

possibilities of alternative humanitarian help that they can do for 

the war situation where access would be denied to ‘‘foreigners.’’

And finally, something which is not very easy technically, would 

be trying to restore a no-fly zone from the base in Djibouti. Now, 

as the special envoy was saying, this is not a solution for the whole 

war problem. There is artillery indeed. But then we have seen in 

Libya that airplanes can knock down artillery forces. So the no-fly 

zone maybe could be extended for further benefits. So I thank you 

for your attention, and I look forward to questions. 

Mr. SMITH. Doctor, thank you so very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Prunier follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. And now Mr. Prendergast. 

STATEMENT OF MR. JOHN PRENDERGAST, CO–FOUNDER, THE 

ENOUGH PROJECT 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, members of this subcommittee, and for you three human rights champions, Congressmen Smith and Payne and Wolf, for all the efforts 

that you have made to shine a bright light for so many years actually on the plight of the people of Sudan and South Sudan. 

Mr. Chairman, since you stole what little thunder I had by reading parts of my testimony to Ambassador Lyman, I thought I would 

have to get a little creative. So I want to pick up on something that 

Ambassador Lyman testified on. He talked about the importance, 

and as President Obama said directly to President Kiir when they 

met in New York at the United Nations, the very strong emphasis 

the United States has on trying to stop the South from giving any 

kind of support to the people in the Nuba Mountains, and Blue 

Nile, and even in Darfur, and their very strong opposition, at least 

stated at this point, to any idea of doing proactive civilian protection, such as the kind of things that you have been very strong in 

asserting, at least consideration of ideas like a no-fly zone. 

And I want to look empirically at what happened over the last 

10, 15 years, and why I think that is very injudicious as a means 

of basing your policy toward the North, toward Sudan, and the potential for conflict between North and South. Because if you look 

at the way we have dealt with this issue of our relationship with 

opposition movements, we have demanded that the South and 

other elements within Africa not support the SPLA-North. We, in 

fact, went further on the Darfur front, and demanded that the 

Chadian Government stop its support of any kind for the Darfurian 

rebels. And we, of course, were at the time, as you pointed out, or 

as Congressman Payne actually pointed out in his cross-examination of Ambassador Lyman, we opposed, the United States opposed 

any kind of no-fly zone during the last decade in Darfur, as there 

had been calls for that. 

So the result has been, interestingly, a weakening of the rebellions, a splitting of the rebellions, which makes it actually less likely that they will come to the table and negotiate and be able to deliver a real peace deal. It makes it unlikely, more unlikely that the 

Government of Sudan will come to the peace table and negotiate 

with elements inside Sudan that are actually strong enough to 

exact concessions. 

The one and only exception to that is the referendum in the 

South. Because the United States, led by the Congress over the last 

15 years, stayed very, very supportive of the South Sudanese aspirations for self-determination. We were unwavering, Congress was 

unwavering, the activists that cared about this issue were unwavering. And every time the Clinton or the Bush or the Obama administration sort of swayed off to the side, Congress batted them 

back to where they should be. And we were front and center right 

behind General Sembeiywo in negotiating the deal that got the 

self-determination referendum, called the CPA, the only, by the 

way, element of the CPA that was implemented. Then we stayed 

on the ball, actually dropped it for a while with General Gration, 

39

and picked it back up because history never ends. And President 

Obama himself led the policy process, and we led the international 

community to back the South Sudanese heroic efforts to have that 

referendum held on time and peacefully. 

That is the successful model, of us being supportive of opposition 

demands for change, not running away from them, not finding 

ways to undermine any kind of support to the opposition. It simply 

flies in the face of the facts of our history here in Sudan. 

So I want to just use the rest of my time to go straight to the 

policies that I think the U.S. should be pursuing now in Sudan. 

And the trigger, you know, today we may not be able to get President Obama’s attention to alter this policy immediately. But I do 

think people streaming out of the Nuba Mountains and the Blue 

Nile, the way they are doing out of Somalia now, because they are 

starving to death, because the Government of Sudan—2 or 3 

months from now—because the Government of Sudan is blocking 

and denying humanitarian access, and using food as a weapon of 

war, as they have done over the last 22 years of their rule in 

Sudan, I think that will be a potential for a trigger. 

We have needed triggers of street protests in Egypt. We have 

needed triggers of the march across Libya that the Ghadafi forces. 

We needed the guy literally setting himself on fire in Tunisia. We 

need triggers. And I feel like this potentially could be a trigger. 

And we need to be ready, those that have advocated for so long for 

a stronger policy, to push the Obama administration to go in the 

right direction. The three areas I think we should focus on are democracy, protection, and justice. And these are very consistent with 

everything that this subcommittee and you, Congressman Wolf, 

have pushed for for so long. And I want to just get very specific 

quickly on each of those three areas. 

On the democratic transition side, we have so many levers of 

being supportive of opposition elements within a country that is authoritarian. There are the above-board efforts that we all know 

about that we have all supported, the NDIs and IRIs, and all the 

kind of political party development and civil society support. There 

are also under the table ways of doing it. And I think we need to 

look at all those ways of strengthening the opposition now in the 

face of this authoritarian regime in Khartoum. 

Secondly under democratic transition, I think having and building unified support internationally for elections that are internationally monitored. It probably won’t happen, but at least we are 

leading with the right principles. And now we have sort of 

capitulated on basic principles. We are not dealing with what we 

ought to be fundamentally dealing with. As Ambassador Lyman acknowledged, the fundamental issues are the abusive governance at 

the center of the country. Well, one way you get at that is democratic elections. And there are elements within the regime that 

want this, elements within the regime that don’t want it. So push 

it and help create divisions within. 

The third piece on the democratic transition side is we have 

wasted years chasing all these different peace processes in Darfur 

and in Southern Kordofan, Blue Nile, and East, and all these other 

places. And now we are going to take the unusual step of bringing 

the Darfurian parties, some of them, to Washington at the end of 

40

this month, and waste more people’s time. Instead of cratering that 

process, accepting and acknowledging that it was dead a long time 

ago, the Doha process, and folding our peace efforts into a national 

strategy that addresses all of the core issues at once. All the regions share the same problems. They are cut out of the pie, the division, the slices of the pie politically and economically. That has 

to be restructured. The constitution has to be revised. And we have 

to end up with elections that allow people of Sudan to just choose 

their leaders. That is the democratic transition part of it. 

The second part is civilian protection. This is the one where we 

get all hung up on, everybody gets very agitated, and we spend a 

lot of time divided. First, I think everyone agrees, but unfortunately the administration hasn’t moved on it, that we need to have 

those really harsh sanctions. We don’t need to crow about it. We 

just need to go after the businesses, really, it is the businesses that 

the senior members of the National Congress Party are financing. 

The military-industrial complex that keeps this country afloat, that 

the Iranians have invested heavily in, this is where the money is, 

let’s go after it. And if we can’t freeze those accounts, then let’s 

identify it and publicize it, and show the people of Sudan how this 

regime is stealing all of the oil money and keeping it in the hands 

of a few people. So there is at least the idea of exposure, even if 

we can’t get at those assets to be able to freeze them. So that is 

the first element of civilian protection. 

The second element is really pushing the administration to look 

at how do you protect those people in the Nuba Mountains, in 

Darfur, in Blue Nile from these aerial attacks? The reason why I 

would differ with Ambassador Lyman, and Gerard just got to the 

point right away, is that, yes, of course they have artillery on the 

ground. But the biggest advantage that the government has had in 

all of these conflicts in Sudan has been their air superiority. Take 

that away from them, and you suddenly get the hurting stalemate 

that the North and South had to get the CPA to get the referendum. 

Absent the hurting stalemate, absent removing the air advantage, the war actually would go on longer, which is precisely what 

he said is what will happen if we actually do these things. So I feel 

like our analysis of that is completely the opposite, is this would 

actually accelerate a peaceful end to the conflict, as opposed to 

throw gasoline on the fire. 

And then, of course, third point under civilian protection, and 

this is the one we can have a big difference right now, to prevent 

those people from streaming out of Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile 

starving to death 3 months from now, we need a cross-border program of humanitarian assistance right now. The United States did 

it in the South. The U.S. and Europe did it in the South in the 

1980s before Operation Lifeline in Sudan. We did it during the 

time of Mengistu during the great famine in Ethiopia, where we 

initiated the cross-border operation to save millions of lives in Ethiopia and Eritrea. We can’t sit back and just beg the Sudanese Government to let humanitarian agencies in to stop starving their own 

people. We need to jam them by pushing food assistance through 

the border, like we have done in other places. It is not like this is 

the first time. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. 

41

Finally, support for justice, and I will close very quickly. We need 

to increase our support for the apprehension of those already—arrest warrants have already been issued for, including the President. And your follow-up comments, Congressman Smith, were 

very helpful during Ambassador Lyman’s testimony, in that way, 

going after the countries that are supporting his visits when the 

President goes and visits these countries. And then especially that 

further cases of the International Criminal Court be opened of specific senior members of the National Congress Party that are most 

responsible for the atrocities, not only that have been committed in 

Darfur, but also in the Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile, and Abyei. 

And if any of these things happened, anything we have talked 

about today, your recommendations and ours, it will only, I believe, 

be because Congress takes a leading role, just like you have over 

the last 20 years, in crafting a meaningful U.S. policy and demanding meaningful U.S. action, action that in the case of Sudan can 

actually save millions of lives. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Prendergast follows:]

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Mr. SMITH. Mr. Prendergast, thank you very much for your testimony and your leadership. You talked about us being battlers. 

Well, you have been a battler-in-chief. And I applaud you for your 

profound impatience with the situation as it is. Because no matter 

who is in the White House, you have been consistent, and you have 

been absolutely bold. So thank you for that. And we all know that 

the people who have been so malaffected, thank you, even though 

they may not know how you have raised your voice and your actions on their behalf. I would just point out, and I didn’t say this 

earlier, but Agha Deng, who was the translator for Mr. Deng, is a 

Lost Girl herself. She lived in a refugee camp from the age of 

seven, spent 10 years without her parents, apart from her parents. 

And so she too is a very noble and courageous young woman. And 

thank her for her courage and for being here today. I would like 

to now ask Ellen Ratner if she would present her testimony. 

STATEMENT OF MS. ELLEN RATNER, JOURNALIST 

Mr. RATNER. I will go quick. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Payne, and members of the subcommittee. My name 

is Ellen Ratner. And since 1993, I have been a journalist here in 

Washington, and I have been privileged to cover Capitol Hill and 

the White House as a member of the Radio-TV galleries here. My 

interest in South Sudan began when, as political editor of Talkers 

Magazine, I was approached by Joe Madison, a well known radio 

colleague, who suggested that we form a diverse group of hosts to 

travel of what was then Southern Sudan. We brought with us six 

hosts, each representing a different point in the political spectrum, 

from left, right, and center. 

The humanitarian organization, Christian Solidarity International, arranged and guided our trip. I have traveled extensively 

through the third world. And despite our religious differences, I am 

Jewish, I have been very impressed with the Christian Solidarity 

International’s impressive work, low costs, and efficiency. 

Our first visit was in March 2008. It moved me greatly. We met 

with the President of South Sudan, President Kiir, and then went 

to Gok Machar in Aweil North County, where we slept with tents 

and saw abductees who have been liberated from the North. I say 

abductees because it is not politically correct these days to use the 

word ‘‘slave.’’

In the late 1990s, Bashir’s government in Khartoum successfully 

pressured the United Nations agencies and many members of 

states to refer to Sudanese slavery as abduction and slaves as 

abductees. However, as a member of the press and as a radio person, I call things as I see them without political niceties. And let 

me assure you and assure the subcommittee what is happening is 

slavery, plain and simple. People are being beaten, stabbed, raped, 

and having their throats slit. The violence and murder is committed because these individuals are considered by their captors as 

war booty. In the minds of their captors, they are outside the law, 

they can be beaten, raped, insulted, branded, and even killed with 

impunity. 

If there is anyone on the subcommittee who doubts the horrible 

reality of Sudanese slavery, come with me to South Sudan. I would 

be glad to take anybody in this room. After my visit, I came back 

50

came back to tell the story, and I have returned to Sudan regularly. I just left there on Saturday to attend this hearing. And even 

these hearts, the heart that I am wearing right now is made by 

women who have seen at least one person killed in front of them 

and are in a PTSD recovery group there. 

In the course of these visits, my life has been profoundly changed 

by a blind teenager, Sudanese boy named Ker Deng, who I am sitting next to. He is a member of the Dinka tribe of South Sudan. 

I met Ker in September 2010, when I was asked by John Eibner 

of Christian Solidarity International, to help him. John knew that 

I too had lost vision in one eye. And after four retinal detachments, 

what I have in my right eye was saved by Dr. Julia Haller, who 

is now the ophthalmologist-in-chief at Wills Eye. And she is also 

the surgeon who guided the team for Ker’s surgery. I also serve on 

the board of Lighthouse International. And Mark Ackermann, who 

is the president, is here as well. And since I enjoy some of the access to the best eye surgeons, I came to serve as Ker’s sponsor in 

the United States. 

You have heard Ker’s story, so I am not going to review that, although it is in my written record. And I want to say that every 

time I look into Ker’s damaged, unresponsive eyes, I sense the unspeakable suffering endured by him and his mother, and the countless others still being held. I certainly heard about slavery growing 

up. I grew up Jewish. I attended Passover services for 2 nights 

every year, and I have heard about slavery. So the whole idea that 

it is happening currently very much moved me. 

The world has really known about the horrible reality of Sudanese slavery in our time. And it is that Americans, I believe, should 

be paying attention to this. I certainly have been talking about it 

on radio. The 2000 peace accords ended hostilities in South Sudan, 

and also the North Sudanese Government sponsored slave raiding, 

but negotiations have failed to produce a mechanism for the liberation and repatriation of slaves held in the North like Ker and his 

mother. We are very much working with the Arab slave retrievers 

and Christian Solidarity International to try and get Ker’s mother 

out of slavery. 

And in 2000, then-Secretary of State for African Affairs Susan 

Rice said we have an obligation not to speak out, but to ameliorate 

the suffering. And despite official condemnations and blue ribbon 

panels, there has been little done by the U.S. Government or U.N. 

agencies—and, by the way, we also cover the United Nations at 

Talk Radio News—to ameliorate the suffering of South Sudanese 

slaves. 

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Payne, members of the subcommittee, it is 

time to take affirmative steps. Christian Solidarity International, 

in concert with thousands of people in good will, regardless of race 

or religion, have stepped in to fill the void. Diane Gooch has certainly been a partner in our work there, and certainly Tony Sayegh 

have been working with her with Christian Solidarity. Slavery is 

an internationally recognized crime against humanity. And effective action by the United States and the international community 

is long overdue. And I am hoping that today’s hearing and Ker’s 

testimony inspire our Government, along with Christian Solidarity 

51

International and other NGOs, to do something about this horrible 

crime. Thank you. 

Mr. SMITH. Ms. Ratner, thank you so very much for your testimony, and for your very strong and principled advocacy. It is certainly, I think, having a profound impact. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Ratner follows:]


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Mr. SMITH. Let me ask just a couple of questions of our distinguished panel. And I did, as you know, Mr. Prendergast, borrow 

some of your testimony to ask Ambassador Lyman. I think it is important. Very often I think we ought to try to reverse the order, 

but protocol usually wins out, and the administration goes first. So 

they don’t get to hear what you have to say, which is why I tried 

to tee that up for him to try to get a response. So I thank you all 

for your testimony. Without objection, all of your written testimonies will be made a part of the record. 

Mr. Prendergast, you mentioned that the opportunity for more 

aggressive action may come in the next few months, when the denial of humanitarian assistance, which will skyrocket, as you say 

in Southern Kordofan, Blue Nile, and, you know—so early warning, 

it is coming. It will be very severe. Skyrocketing is, I think, an apt 

description. Do you think that the international community grasps 

that, as well as our own administration? 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. It doesn’t. And I think that, you know, with 

the competing crises in the region to the north and east, with Arab 

Spring, with the Somali famine, and other things, that it just 

isn’t—you know, something that is on the next—over the next horizon is just not going to be prioritized as much as the things that 

are on this horizon. And especially with Libya and Syria unfolding 

now, and the Somali famine, and the effort that is going to be necessary to try to stop tens and tens of thousands of children from 

starving to death, you can understand why. 

And with all the things coming at people, they just ignore the 

thing they don’t have to worry about for another few months. Well, 

our job as activists, and yours of course, and you have taken this 

on so strongly, both of you, as the legislative branch, is to take the 

battering ram and hammer it against the door of the executive 

branch until they listen. And the people of Southern Kordofan, the 

people of Blue Nile, and we have already seen the displaced, ethnically cleansed people of Abyei strewn like rubbish all over the 

northern part of Bahr el-Ghazal, we have seen what has happened 

with 8 years of this kind of a strategy in Darfur, and we just want 

to get ahead of that. And this is an opportunity now to take some 

bold actions, particularly, first and foremost, on the humanitarian 

front, to get the cross-border humanitarian assistance through the 

courageous NGOs that are willing to deliver that assistance, both 

Sudanese and international, get that assistance in and break the 

attempt to try to create starvation as a principal weapon of war, 

which the government has used so effectively for so many years. 

So my feeling is that our job is to push and push, get some early 

action. But the sky will open up, I have no doubt, in the next few 

months. We will have an opportunity in the next few months to 

push a more aggressive policy. We just need to be there with a unified position about what the things are we expect from the Obama 

administration, the legislative branch, and civil society working together, pushing those people within the administration. Because 

there are very good people in the administration who do want to 

make a difference, including—well, we can go on, the list goes on 

of all kinds of people that have a long history on Sudan advocacy. 

So I think that it isn’t like they don’t want to do anything. We just 

have to push it up to the top of that pyramid that is constantly 

55

pushing issues like Sudan down and say, no, it is time now for the 

people, or hundreds of thousands will die. 

Mr. SMITH. Ambassador Lyman, in response to a question, said 

that Nigeria and South Africa have not been as helpful. They come 

at this from a whole different perspective. I would appreciate your 

view, especially with Nigeria as President of the Security Council 

for this month. It seems to me that some very aggressive work on 

their part, if they could be persuaded, could help mitigate this additional looming crisis on top of the already existing crisis. 

And, Dr. Prunier, you might want to speak to that as well, Mr. 

Prendergast and anyone else. 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. I think that, you know, it certainly has been 

the case that some of the members of the African delegation, African Union delegation, that have made their way to the Security 

Council have been difficult on the issue of Sudan, and others have 

been forward leaning. Right now we have two countries, as you 

point out, that have been unfortunately some of the biggest obstacles to getting any kind of human rights advocacy moved forward 

in Sudan today. 

And so I think what is required, and having done it when I 

worked for the Clinton administration, you have to go—you have 

to send senior emissaries from the White House to their version of 

the White House in Pretoria and Abuja and talk frankly about our 

shared interests and where we are going on this stuff. 

Mr. SMITH. And that has not been done? 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. And do it frequently. 

No, it is talking point 37 in a demarche by the Ambassador, our 

Ambassador, going in and doing his regular meetings. That is not—

it just isn’t going to get anyone’s attention. It has to be a priority. 

Again, we don’t have to advertise it either. Not every diplomatic 

venture the United States takes has to be in the headlines. We can 

go quietly. They will appreciate that. 

Let us do the kind of diplomacy that actually gets results with 

Africa instead of just waiting until the thing is a traffic jam and 

then sort of issuing, well, they should do this, they should do that 

publicly. Now, that will dig them deeper into a trench against taking formal action. So I think that is the kind of diplomacy, 

proactive diplomacy, we need to see on behalf of an issue that matters so much to the American people and matters so much to the 

United States Congress. 

Mr. PRUNIER. I might add a little caveat to that. I have lived 

over the past 8 years in Addis Ababa, and I have been in constant 

contact with the African Union. There is a very special feeling 

there. The indictment of Bashir was taken as an insult to Africa. 

It is very difficult, but you are trying to talk with people. They say, 

well, the victims are Black Africans. Yeah, but this is an insult to 

Africa. And, you know, you—this is the same thing that we saw 

with this lost stamina of support for Ghadafi. 

There is a kind—I would quote Julius Nyerere on this when he 

had a big fight with the Organization of African Unity in 1978, 

when he was invaded by Idi Amin and they refused to help him. 

And he said, ‘‘You are not the Organization of African Unity, you 

are a trade union of heads of state.’’ And these were very harsh 

words. Nyerere was a very plainspoken, direct man. And the same 

56

phenomenon is at work. It is not that they love Bashir. It is a 

group thing. And for the United States to try to dictate another position would be extremely difficult. 

Mr. SMITH. Let me just ask you, If there were a court like the 

Sierra Leone court, headed so well by David Crane, or the Rwandan court, which were regional courts, would that have been more 

acceptable? It seems to me that just because it is housed at The 

Hague, it is the International Criminal Court—you know, it is very 

superficial. I certainly can understand, and I know you are conveying what you found, but when monstrous deeds are committed, 

would a regional court have been more effective? 

Mr. PRUNIER. Yes. But I cannot see a regional court happening. 

Who would be part of that regional court? The only countries that 

would love to have such a regional court would be Uganda, Kenya 

and the usual gang of suspects. And I am not sure at all that this 

would happen as an internal part of the AU debates. 

Mr. SMITH. Yes. 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. One of the things that is important to point 

out is I think—and I think Gerard and I would agree on this—is 

that, you know, the fact that the first few cases that the ICC took 

up were African, you know, and that——

Mr. SMITH. Milosevic, although that was——

Mr. PRENDERGAST. That was a regional court. And it appeared—

and then Bashir gets the arrest warrant against him. And as Gerard is saying, it appeared to be the International Criminal Court 

against Africa, two heads of state, you know, who is next, you 

know, because many of them have human rights abuses that could 

potentially rise up. And now we are seeing the Ivory Coast being 

looked at, we are seeing Libya and a number of other countries. 

I think that as time goes on, and the ICC widens its lens to other 

regions and begins to pick up on these issues, it will become less 

of a sting, a difficulty, less of a solidarity-based rejection by a number of these heads of state. But right now it is—the phenomenon 

is, as Dr. Prunier said. However, quiet diplomacy in support of specific interventions, like having an international investigation of 

what goes on, what has gone on in the Nuba Mountains and Blue 

Nile, these kinds of things, working quietly on some of these things 

could yield fruit. It is not a guarantee, but we need to try a lot 

harder than we are trying now, and to do that, you have to send 

representatives from Washington. 

Mr. SMITH. One last point on the Court. Do you feel the U.S. 

Government sufficiently weighed in with Beijing to—when the visit 

occurred with Bashir to get them to do something constructive? I 

know they are not signatories and all of that, but, I mean, the 

hero’s welcome that he was afforded was unconscionable. 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. I will go ahead, too, also. But unlikely it could 

have changed their view, but we should have been stronger. 

Mr. PRUNIER. You could have done it, not immediately. But the 

Chinese are lost. When you talk to them, they are trying now to 

get on better terms with Juba. At the same time they don’t want—

because Khartoum is their old ally. They are new imperialists. 

They are not really used to this situation. And, of course, they 

would not accept immediately an injunction of the United States, 

57

but the idea would make its way because they themselves are uncertain about what to do. 

Ms. RATNER. I just want to say one thing. I travel around the 

world. I am in Grenada and the West Indies quite a bit, and in 

Sudan and other places in the world, and the Chinese are there, 

everywhere. I mean, our presence is minor often compared to the 

Chinese and difficult unless we put some pressure on them. 

Mr. SMITH. Well, they all have their own human rights atrocities 

to account for as well. So dictatorships don’t usually put people 

first. 

Let me ask with regards to your statement, Mr. Prendergast, 

about draconian financial sanctions against officials and their associated businesses responsible for attacks against citizens. As you 

know, in April 2006, President Bush did an Executive order. I 

think it only included four people. It seems to me that list and the 

annex should have been much larger. But has that been implemented in any way? 

And I think when you get to the businesses and the connections 

in terms of a personal sanction—government sanctions are important, but when you go after and target individuals, that might have 

a more chilling effect and hopefully an accountability effect as well. 

Would you recommend, any of you, that the administration promulgate a new Executive order, an expanded one building on this 

one, to hold individuals to account? 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. I think that was a really insightful moment. 

Again, trying to understand—because we are all—at the same time 

as we are advocates for a stronger policy, we also need to be students of what has gone on before. If you remember, Andrew 

Natsios articulated this whole idea of a plan B, that we were going 

to—if they don’t do X, then we are going to do Y. And Y was plan 

B, and it was going to be this very, very strong series of deep and 

biting unilateral sanctions which we would work to multilateralize 

aggressively, and talked a big game about it, and then we didn’t 

do it. 

We, as you said, put a few—all they do is change the name of 

the company, and it is no longer the next month—I mean, it is just 

silly. So you have to chase and have active intelligence that focuses 

on all of these very wily efforts that the private sector in Sudan 

and their international counterparts take in order to evade having 

a light shining on them. 

So the biggest argument that cratered plan B during the Bush 

administration and undermines the use of more aggressive sanctions under the Obama administration—in other words, it is a bipartisan executive branch paralysis on this issue—and that is that 

our diplomacy will be undermined if we push more strongly this accountability tool. 

I believe—and I think we all share this—the opposite; that, in 

fact, speaking of accountability and then backing it up with these 

kinds of things, with draconian sanctions, with crossborder humanitarian operations when they deny humanitarian assistance, a nofly zone when they keep bombing civilian populations, that would 

actually strengthen our diplomatic hand. That would actually mean 

that we are backing up what we are saying all these years about 

human rights, and governance, and on democracy, and all the 

58

peace and all the other stuff that we are doing. And we would be 

taken more seriously instead of making these vague threats, never 

implementing them, and then looking even more like the paper 

tiger that America gets accused of being all the time. We don’t 

have to be a paper tiger in Sudan if we make some policy decisions 

that our first interest and foremost interest in Sudan is the people 

of Sudan. 

Mr. SMITH. Let me ask two final questions. Dr. Prunier, you 

mentioned as your fifth point that the Eritrean Government should 

be told that intervening in South Sudan for aiding and abetting 

such Khartoum-based destabilization plans is not acceptable. The 

danger here is to see a repeat of Eritrea’s support for al-Shabab’s 

terrorist movement in Somalia, and such a development would be 

strongly encouraged. 

Who should make that appeal? We have very little contact with 

the Eritrean Government ourselves. What government or governments should do that? 

And my final question to all of you, obviously Ambassador 

Princeton Lyman knew that we had a former slave here today. It 

is an issue that I had raised. I am not the only one. Many of you 

have raised it for many, many years. As was mentioned earlier—

John mentioned this from Christian Solidarity International—slavery was kind of resurrected back in 1983 as a means of war, exploitation, but also as a means of demoralizing. And as Mr. Deng 

pointed out in his testimony, the men were killed; the women and 

the children were abducted, put into slavery and abused thereafter. 

My question, because it was not in Ambassador Lyman’s testimony at all, no reference to slavery, which I thought was an oversight perhaps, he did say he would address it—your feeling about 

the issue. We heard from Dr. Garang earlier in his taped statement, obviously having died so long ago so unfortunately. But this 

issue seems to be on the sidelines. I am at a loss to know why. 

Ms. Ratner. 

Ms. RATNER. You know, it is interesting that—I have talked to 

some of my friends in the military, and one of the things they say 

is, look, whenever there is a war, there are prisoners of war taken. 

And even if you don’t want to call it slavery, although it is clearly 

slavery, people are returned. So if this is a prisoner—if you want 

to call it prisoner of war, okay, you know, we can argue about 

words. Why not return these people? The war is done. It is now a 

separate country. 

Mr. PRUNIER. Physically a lot of the people who have been reduced into slavery are in the area which is now part of the fighting. 

They don’t go all the way north. They remain in the strip of that 

Sahelian, which is neither North nor South. And physically, you 

know, it is part of the war now. 

Ms. RATNER. I totally disagree. I am not saying that there aren’t 

a lot of people in that area, but the people I just talked to on 

Wednesday and Thursday a week ago were not from a war area. 

They were from a peaceful area where there has been no conflict 

for years, and they are just held. 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Prendergast. 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. I think that, you know, this is a regime in 

Khartoum that has created an environment and uses starvation, 

59

uses slave raiding, uses aerial bombing, uses ethnic conflict, all of 

these tools. These are the tools that it uses to fight war. Therefore, 

we need to highlight the individual abuses, the slave trade that it 

fostered during the 1980s and 1990s, the use of starvation as a 

weapon, all of the ethnic conflict that it will foster inevitably in 

South Sudan, the kind of tactics it is undertaking, and we need to 

highlight all of these. But we need to focus all of that attention 

then on what are we going to do about that regime that does all 

of these things. 

And so there are important steps that need to be taken to demand and press for people to be able to return safely home to their 

home areas, and those need to continue. U.S., the United States, 

can back those more strongly. At the same time, though, we need 

to be more focused on ending the kind of government that allows 

for these kinds of things to be part and parcel of what goes on as 

normal in Sudan today. And that is just simply unacceptable morally. 

Mr. SMITH. Ranking Member Payne. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you. Thank you all very much. And thank 

you, Mr. Deng, for your testimony. 

And on this whole question of, I think—I think Dr. Prunier gave 

a very interesting historical background on the problems, and I 

couldn’t agree with you more, the whole question of the—I think, 

too, there is a psychological attitude that went into the Arabization 

of Sudan because it seems that it is a superiority feeling that 

wasn’t helped with the Ottomans separating the country. 

The British had two rules, one for the North, as you know, and 

another administration for the South. So when independence came 

in 1956, it was just a natural thing to follow the British model 

and—but the fact that—one of the things that was very surprising, 

which also points out—your point is that the Darfurians—throughout the history, of course, the poor people are usually in the military, and these were people who actually fought against SPLM, 

SPLA. You know, you are in the army, and the army fights, and 

poor people get in the army, and so when Darfur occurred, because 

they were Islamic, it kind of shocked people because of the fact that 

they were Islamic believers, as was the government in Khartoum, 

where the conflict had been argued for many years as it was the 

Islamic North, the Arabic North, against the animus or Christian 

South, so more of a religious conflict. 

So that was very alarming and surprising to people that they 

went and bombed their own religious allies, which was shocking. 

And that was, of course, right after the CPA and the agreement between the North and the South occurred. So I think that it is much 

more of a superiority complex. 

I agree with these three groups wholeheartedly, with what you 

say, but I don’t necessarily agree that the—you know, I think that 

Bashir has used his cleverness more so with getting people to say 

that the indictment of the ICC is because we are in Africa that this 

is happening, and that it is unfair, and they wouldn’t do it other 

places because, you know, you didn’t get the outcry when Charles 

Taylor was indicted. He was the head of state, you know, and the 

DRC, one of the Vice Presidential candidates, Bemba, was indicted 

by the International Criminal Court. And when he was simply visVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:20 Feb 29, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00063 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\AGH\100411\70583 HFA PsN: SHIRL
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iting, I guess it was in France or somewhere, or Belgium, he was 

arrested, and we did not get the outcry. 

I think that Bashir has used very cleverly and manipulatively 

himself to somehow influence some other leaders in Africa. I don’t 

know whether they have special relationships, countries that might 

need oil. I don’t know. But I don’t think that the overall feeling in 

Africa is that you are going—because, like you said, Africans 

weren’t killing white men, you know, they were killing Africans. 

And so I think that he used—one, he used religion to say, you are 

going after me because I am Islamic, because when I first got involved in the issue, when the whole question came up of slavery, 

there was—people said, well, there was opposition to raising the 

issue, and it was—religion was brought in, you are attacking us because of our religion. And, of course, I do think that the Islamic religion has been attacked, unfortunately, and put in a category of 

everyone being evil and wrong, which I think is wrong. So therefore, it does give the argument to Islamic leaders that they are 

doing this because of our religion. So I think that because of the 

longtime-held discrimination against Islam in general, some of 

these issues occur. 

But, you know, the whole question of what should be done—I 

agree—the question—and maybe, Mr. Prendergast, you could answer it. If we say we are not going to—we are going to insist that 

SPLA keep out of Southern Kordofan—and I, you know, also agree. 

I don’t think that prolonged fighting is the answer. But if Bashir 

refuses to allow, one, humanitarian food coming in because there 

is already becoming a food shortage; and number two, if they continue to kill people without the SPLM North being able to defend 

themselves, I mean—and they won’t let peacekeepers in, I don’t 

know, maybe Dr. Prunier, John Prendergast, what is the solution? 

I mean—and secondly, would you clarify more the images that you 

say your satellite has possibly seen, that there may be mass graves 

in part of Southern Kordofan or Blue Nile? 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. Our focus has to be front and center on protecting civilian populations. I think the opposition to taking any action is the sort of inertia, the status quo position, and it will always 

be that unless we politicize this issue. 

So I would actually give a political answer to the policy question, 

that a group of Congresspeople led by you two and others, who—

like Congressman Wolf, who have been on the front lines for so 

long, and get some Senators and begin to have meetings at the 

seniormost levels at the White House. If you can get the President, 

great, but Denis McDonough speaks for the President on foreign 

policy. He is the key person. He has led on this issue, and he was 

constructive once he turned and focused on this. He was very constructive on the referendum. Valerie Jarrett, Mike Strautmanis. Go 

for the politicos and demonstrate that there is wide and deep support and that—I mean, that is you guys leading and getting some 

of your colleagues to go. 

I don’t think that talking to—Princeton Lyman is one of the best 

Ambassadors we have, so it is not him that is the problem here. 

It is that it hasn’t—there was a surge of interest around the NorthSouth referendum. The President got directly involved. Bipartisan 

support for the President to do more. The administration was exVerDate 0ct 09 2002 10:20 Feb 29, 2012 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00064 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\WORK\AGH\100411\70583 HFA PsN: SHIRL
61

tremely successful in supporting that and helping to birth a new 

country, and then it turned away and stopped focusing at a higher 

level. So you are left with Ambassador Lyman, who has to sort of 

roll around at this level where nothing gets through the glass ceiling. 

You guys have to break the glass ceiling like you have over and 

over again. I don’t see another way to do it. The activists will be 

out there, too, hammering away, doing the ads, doing the call-ins, 

doing the email campaigns, the demonstrations, the protests and 

stuff. But we have got to make the issue of protecting civilian populations that you have championed so strongly a political issue 

somehow, just like it was politicized that we had to be supportive 

of the referendum, just like it was politicized in the last decade 

that we had to do something about Darfur. It is the only way we 

are going to get action on an issue like this. 

So I would say it is incumbent on us as activists to figure out 

better ways of targeting President Obama for getting his attention 

and getting some action on these issues, because we already 

know—we feel we know what the solutions are. We have talked 

about them many times. We just have to recapture the imagination 

and the attention of the senior policy people. 

So I think finding those folks at 1600 Pennsylvania and making 

them somewhat accountable to this wide and deep group of Americans who care about these people in Sudan and their well-being, 

which hasn’t gone away. We still have the Darfur coalition, and the 

antigenocide coalition, and the folks that care about the NorthSouth issues and want to protect them. They are all there. They 

are still doing their little things. We have got to, in fact, have that 

kind of leadership. 

So I look at it as very much up to us here in Washington to press 

and pound the administration. When there is a lot of things going 

on, going into election season and saying, you know what, all of 

your pollsters and all of your political advisors are focusing so 

much on the youth vote, the youth vote is going to swing it this 

year in 2012. Well, there is a substantial portion of young people 

on campuses and high schools all across this country who care 

about this question, actually care about the fate of the people of 

Sudan, that care about the fate of the people of Darfur. They may 

not know all the ins and outs of the policy angles, but they care. 

This is a policy and political win if this administration, backed by 

bipartisan congressional support, takes a more supportive and aggressive action in support of human rights in Sudan. 

Ms. RATNER. I just want to remind both Mr. Smith and Mr. 

Payne that, first of all, the people who retrieved the slaves are 

Arabs. And I asked, in fact, one of the retrievers, I said, ‘‘Why do 

you do this?’’ and he said, ‘‘Because in my religion, Allah tells me 

that this is the most important thing to do’’; and that also there 

are these Arab Dinka slave committees that, you know, give the 

novidium and assess what it is going to cost to get people. 

So there are, you know—anybody who wants to say it is all one 

way or the other, it is not. There are people who are Arabs who 

are very much trying to help out. And, in fact, Ker talked to one 

of them the other day, and he is going to try to get his mother. 

62

And the second thing I want to say is that in 1994, I was one 

of the six journalists that went with President Clinton’s hunger 

commission to the Horn of Africa. And we went to Eritrea, and Eritrea was touted as this new democracy. It had just won its independence, whatever, from Ethiopia in this war, and it was touted 

as AID was giving it money, and it was going to be this great free 

democracy, et cetera, and look what has happened. 

So I just want to say I think it is very important that we as 

Americans keep our finger on the pulse over there, because what 

happens in South Sudan and Sudan proper can affect all of us for 

many generations. 

Mr. PAYNE. I think there is no question about it. I agree, I think 

you substantiate what I said, that people have broad-brushed 

Islam and Arab people as being all negative, especially since 9/11, 

things that are happening, just unbelievable, and I think that is 

unfortunate. And somehow we have got to really work out and say 

there are bad—everything—it was a Christian that bombed Oklahoma Oklahoma City Federal building. He was a church-going guy. 

So, you know, we have this way of broad-brushing whole groups, 

and I think the quicker we can get out of that, the better. 

And finally, I do think that we ought to really reach out. I have 

been to Eritrea, and I have tried to see if that government can do 

things in the right direction. I do think that they have made 

some—believe it or not, they made some overtures in the last several months asking to have discussions. So I think that we should 

have an open door to hear, well, what is it that you really want 

to talk about, and if there are some things that we can really do 

to change it. But they are getting ready to, you know, mold them 

almost to a step up with Iran and North Korea, State Sponsors of 

Terrorism, which I think is a little bit much. 

Sudan isn’t even close. And I do think that we need to have negotiations with people that we—we do it with everyone else now, 

North Korea, Iran. But we tend to have things shut off, and I do 

think we—an error was made when the border decision was made 

in Ethiopia. Our great military allies were found to be wrong in the 

Badme situation. But our policy, our Government did not push to 

enforce the decision, which, you know—I mean, that doesn’t mean, 

therefore, you stay there for a decade. 

But, you know, our policy is relatively inconsistent, and I think 

that if we could ever figure out our policy under any administration, I would love to see that day. When we have a consistent policy 

where you have Assad shooting people down in the street, and 

know Ghadafi is hiding somewhere, and no one is saying too much 

about Assad, it baffles me. But I really appreciate all of the great 

work that each and every one of you are doing. 

And, Ker, what do you want to be when you get big? 

Mr. DENG. Say again. 

Mr. PAYNE. What do you want to be when you get big? 

Mr. DENG. I want to help people. 

Mr. PAYNE. Well, you can’t have a better want than that. So congratulations. And I hope you—and I know you will be able to do 

that when you get grown. 

Thank you. 

63

Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Payne. I want to thank 

the panel. 

I do have one final question with regards to an issue that I think 

is extremely important, and it often gets underfocused upon, and 

that is the issue of forced Islamization. I recently chaired a hearing 

as chairman of the Helsinki Commission on a very disturbing and 

absolutely underfocused upon issue in Egypt. We heard—as some 

of you may know, I have worked on human trafficking for the last 

15 years, actually wrote the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. 

And a woman, who was a lead investigator at ODIHR as part of 

the OSCE on trafficking—she is now a professor or serving as a 

professor right here in town—testified and had huge amounts of 

corroborating evidence that in Egypt young Coptic Christian girls 

are being abducted at 12, 13 and 14 years of age not by the dozens, 

not by scores, but by the thousands, sold and forced into Islam. 

And then at age 18, after having been abused, are given to an Islamic man as his bride. 

Our Government has said next to nothing. I brought it up with 

our Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor 

and gave him the data. Michele Clark was the lead investigator. 

She was number 2 at the OSCE working on trafficking, and she did 

much of the investigations herself. But somehow it didn’t play into 

the idea that you don’t raise that issue. And many of the Coptic 

Christian leaders have been very quiet. 

These women do not come back. They are shunned by many, unfortunately. And there have been other incidents of this forced 

Islamization. I say that having worked very closely with Ceric, the 

Grand Mufti of Bosnia, who takes a completely different view of respecting all faiths, Christian, Islam, Buddhist, whatever the faith 

might be, affording it full and complete respect. 

I think it is important to point out in the United States that the 

FBI does track hate crimes, and Christians—hate crimes against 

Christians are under 10 percent. Hate crimes against followers of 

Islam are under 10 percent. But Jews, the smallest minority in the 

United States in terms of major religions, have over 70 percent of 

the hate crimes committed against them as recorded by the FBI, 

so a very serious disproportionality. 

And I have always been concerned—and it is baffling, and, Doctor, you might want to speak to this, and maybe Mr. Payne was 

onto this with the superiority deal with the Arab Muslim versus 

the Black Muslim—but in the South it was clear that it was an effort for forced Islamization, the imposition of Sharia law on the 

South. Some may disagree with that, but there was ample evidence 

throughout the invasion of the South that this was the case. 

So I would appreciate your thoughts, because very often the radicals, the Wahhabis and the others who are so radicalized, as opposed to mainstream Islam, which can and does coexist peacefully 

with other religions, which is the way it should be, obviously. So 

your thoughts on that, because I think, you know, the why of it always is a concern to all of us: Why are they attacking the South; 

why are they opposing Sharia law the way they are? 

We know that there has been some very serious violence in Nigeria, and, again, there was a Catholic bishop and a major imam 

traveling throughout Nigeria preaching respect. But frankly, that 

64

was not the case for others who were showing a profound lack of 

it. And then who can forget the Pakistani Minister Bhatti, who was 

very horrifically gunned down, executed by a radical Islamic group 

in Pakistan, and his message was one of respect for all religions, 

including the Christian religion in Pakistan. 

So I would just appreciate maybe final thoughts, if you would, or 

if you just want to leave it at that, we will just conclude. 

Ms. RATNER. Well, you know, I think that at least the people we 

talk to as they are coming back—and I interview by myself, you 

know, 15 or 20 people—everytime I go. There is a lot of forced religion. As I say, I call it like I see it. There are a lot of wackos out 

there. And it is not just there. There are people in other parts of 

the world that want people to be their religion. 

And so I think that at least a lot of the people we see—we saw 

a guy with a cell phone, and I have never seen a returnee slave 

with a cell phone. Well, his job was to try to convert other Dinkas, 

and then his master would call him and take them to the mosque. 

I mean, there are people who have their points of view, and they 

are going to make people in their view, and unfortunately we see 

a lot of that. 

Mr. SMITH. But there is a big difference between proselytizing 

and coercion. 

Ms. RATNER. No, our people are forced with a stick to convert. 

And women—I mean, the women and the being—you know, we talk 

and—were you forced, we ask the women, to be an Arab woman; 

in other words, a female circumcision. And I have got to tell you, 

it is off the charts. And I won’t even describe in the committee how 

they do it. 

Mr. PRUNIER. Perhaps I have a slightly different point of view, 

because it is not religious, it is social. And it is really seen almost 

in terms of an army, how many men do we have on our side, men, 

women and children; how many do they have on the other side. 

The notion of religion, most of the people who try to push people 

into conversion into Islam are so ignorant of Islam themselves, it 

is appalling. These are not doctors of theology that do that at all. 

And there is a kind of—which is totally betrayed by the reality on 

the ground, because the evolution in mentalities—if you go to 

Darfur now, if you were in Darfur 30 years ago, it is completely different. The notion that I am a Muslim, therefore I have to be with 

the people in Khartoum, this is dead. It is completely dead. Thirty 

years ago it was true. So people who are still acting that way, like 

toward the Dinka and themselves, belong to another era. They 

don’t realize it themselves, but they are sort of like walking ghosts. 

They express the position of a society which has died in Sudan. 

Ms. RATNER. But there are a lot of them, and then they take people and they are hurting them physically and mentally. 

Mr. PRUNIER. That is not because something is dead that it 

doesn’t have supporters. There are plenty of neo-Nazis in Europe. 

I doubt very much that they ever come back to power. 

The question is not one of religion, because when you are in 

America, you tend to think of religion as a spiritual thing, as a personal one. There it is really a social process which is—they try to 

impose on people, and it doesn’t work. If it worked, we wouldn’t 

have the war now that we have in Southern Kordofan, that we 

65

have in Blue Nile, because the people who are fighting there are 

Muslims. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. 

Mr. PRENDERGAST. I think we can’t forget that the biggest 

Jihadist recruitment drives, the biggest forced conversion campaigns during the 1990s were—at the height of sort of the regime’s—the National Congress Party’s, then the National Islamic 

Front’s—sort of ideological period were focused in the Nuba Mountains and other border areas as pushing into those areas where 

they could target often minority, non-Muslim populations. But the 

reason why both are right is they did it as a political tool, not because of pure ideological—purely ideologically, you know, creating 

enemies to develop solidarity in the North. 

And I think as the Government of Sudan and the regime in 

Khartoum becomes more and more inward looking now and paranoid, and as Bashir, as clearly evidence would indicate, is reaching 

out more and more to radicalized elements that are inside Sudan 

and in Iran, we need to be very focused on this issue as sort of one 

of the crucial potential human rights issues in Sudan, the abuse 

and politicization of religion to suppress human rights, and I think 

that is what it is about, and that is why both of them are correct, 

I think. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you so much for your leadership. I really appreciate your time today, and we look forward to working with you 

going forward. The hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 4:56 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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