New York Times journalist, Nicholas Kristof, photographed these kids in Sudan's Nuba Mountains in the cave where they shelter from bombings. He writes "They're half-starved and 16 of them live in the cave. They were just haunting."
Video of The (Forida) man who stayed behind in the Nuba Mountains
The Man Who Stayed Behind
Op-Ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof talks with Ryan Boyette, a 30-year-old Florida man who braves bombs by Sudanese military to document atrocities in the Nuba Mountains.
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
A portion of the article:
AS Sudan tries to bomb and starve the Nuba people into submission, it faces an unlikely antagonist: an American man from Florida who married a Nuban woman, gets by on local foods like locusts, and is fighting mortars with video cameras.
...President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan has presided over the killings of perhaps 300 times as many people as President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Bashir hasn’t drawn as much scrutiny as Assad, in part, because many of his killings are in remote areas with no cameras — and Boyette is trying to change that.
I met Boyette here in the Sudanese state of South Kordofan in 2008, and even then he was a remarkable figure who had ritual scarring on his back and lived in a grass-and-mud hut. He had moved to the Nuba Mountains in 2003 to work for Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian aid group, putting on hold his plans to follow his father into police work..
Nicholoas Kristof invites you to comment on this column on his blog, On the Ground. Please also join him on Facebook and Google+, watch his YouTube videos and follow him on Twitter.
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Dodging Bombers in Sudan
Besieged in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains
Published Feb 22, 2012
The Op-Ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof witnesses a growing humanitarian crisis in Sudan, where starving families in the Nuba Mountains are hiding in caves to escape bombing by Sudanese warplanes.
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Read the full article ~ Dodging bombers in Sudan
Portion of the article
...Like starving people everywhere, they had seemed listless, their bodies conserving every ounce of energy to stay alive. “We’ve had nothing to eat but leaves from trees,” one young mother, Samira Zaka, told me. Her malnourished son was gnawing on a piece of wood.
Then the Antonov bomber buzzed above us, and she and her children rose from their torpor. They rushed into caves, and we all cowered deep in the rocks as the plane passed overhead. The Antonov went on to drop a bomb to the south; more on that in a moment.
This is a mass atrocity that has attracted little attention: a government starving its people, massacring them, raping them, and bombing them — all in hopes of crushing a rebel movement. Sudan has barred aid workers and journalists from the area, the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan, in a largely successful effort to conceal savagery that has echoes of Darfur.
Like many others, I’ve denounced President Bashar al-Assad of Syria for his murderous repression, but the more than 7,000 estimated by human rights groups to have been killed under Assad is within the margin of error of estimates of the numbers of people killed by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan.
I slipped into Sudan and the Nuba Mountains without a visa, via a rutted dirt track from South Sudan. My vehicle was covered with mud to make it less visible to bombers, which appeared overhead every couple of hours...
Read the full article ~ Dodging bombers in Sudan
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The Sudanese government is launching full-scale military assults against the Nuba people in South Kordofan. Hundreds of thousands of civilians are at risk because evacuation routes are blocked in addition to the continuous blockade of humanitarian assistance by the Government of Sudan since June 5, 2011.
Tell Secretary Clinton, “THEY CAN’T WAIT!”
Post the following to the State Department’s Facebook page or tag them in a note on your own page (you will need to “like” the page first):
Dear Secretary Clinton: Like Syrians under attack by their own government, innocent civilians in Sudan need immediate protection from the Government of Sudan. Please Act for Sudan – protection and aid are needed now! Hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake. http://actforsudan.org/2012/02/22/secretary-clinton-they-cant-wait/
Tweet Secretary Clinton @StateDept
#SecClinton: Like Syrians, innocent civilians in #Sudan need immediate protection from gov attacks. Act now. @StateDept http://wp.me/p23T0j-dj
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