As did Blessed Daniel, Bishop Gassis fights injustices being committed against the black tribes, including slavery. In that role, the bishop came to Washington to sound the alarm about slavery and genocide in Sudan. That is how I, a human-rights lawyer who focuses on religious freedom around the world, first met him. Bishop Gassis invited me to accompany him on his Christmas pastoral visit to his diocese, El Obeid. The diocese is more than twice the size of Italy.
Government forces control a large part of it.
As the government considers the bishop an 'outlaw,' because he has testified before the United States Congress about the human-rights abuses of the Khartoum regime, he can only visit those areas which the government does not control. We planned to visit two of those areas, the Nuba Mountains and northern Bahr el-Ghazal. These two areas have been devastated by the government's war on the people. If you heard reports of famine in Sudan during 1998, those reports probably referred to these two places. The south of Sudan and the Nuba Mountains, in the center of the country, are home to the country's black tribes.