❧❧❧ Whatever you can do or dream, you can BEGIN IT. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Goethe ❧❧❧
❧❧❧ You were born whole, not broken. Sandra Hammel ❧❧❧
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."
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.
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..
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.
...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...
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/
BIGOTS WANT TO SAY NIGGER, BUT SINCE THEY CAN'T, IT'S "SOCIALIST", "NAZI", "SECRET MUSLIM", "USA HATER"
The final “New Rule” of Bill Maher'stonight (February 17, 2012) is how I have felt (and then some) all along.(You can watch the episode online as soon as they post it, if you subscribe to HBO.) Remember when one of the Dixie Chicks, Natalie Maines, during a London concert ten days before the 2003 invasion of Iraq said "we don't want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States (George W. Bush) is from Texas"?The response was by many that it was awful, disrespectful, even treason.
The "disrespect" given blatantly to President Obama by politicians and others behind his back and to his face are rooted in bigotry in my opinion.He is a "socialist", a "nazi", "he hates religion and/or the USA", and on and on.I believe this “branding” of him is because "they" feel that the word they’d rather use, “nigger”, can't be used openly.The lady in an online "Town Meeting”, who he offered to help her husband with a job, followed this up with suggesting to the President that he stand and do a "jig" was over the line.Who uses the word “jig” nowadays? He responded by politely delivering the line, “No, there will be no dancing”. Entertainer Al Jolson, who liked to entertain in black face did jigs. He was an entertainer. Many want to put President Obama “in his place” - the back of the bus, strip him of his voting rights, put him in prison, send him to Kenya, etc. An entertainer, a sportsman, a second class citizen – all things black people’s can be and be kept in their proper places,but certainly not be treated like the President of the United States of America.
If Jeremiah Wright had suggested this week that women put an aspirin between their legs for birth control as Foster Friess, a major donor to the super PAC backing Rick Santorum, said, I believe the Republicans and their pundit representatives would have spun it into something that pushed Obama into being Satan or something at least like “Well, you know those Kenyans just have no couth, they are crass.”Rep. Wilson yelling "liar" to Obama when he addressed the nation and Congress and Arizona Governor Jan Brewer sticking her finger in his face would not have been acceptable behavior to a white Republican President. Republican Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell’s statement, “Making Obama a one-term President is my single most important political goal” is at minimum a political goal with no respect for the voters who put President Obama into the highest office of the nation.Fixing our people’s problems hasn’t had McConnell’s attention.
There is an element in the country who can’t cope with a black man in the White House.It turns their stomachs.It is all about race.Not about a birth certificate, being a secret muslim, etc.Are there good and bad bigots?Not in my mind.And yet they have become "acceptable" in that it has been commonplace to hear this rhetoric starting when Barack Obama decided to run for President.And we have accepted it by the fact of not having leaders shut it down, but actually riding on bigotry’s coat tails.The courage for our politicians to let it continue and swell comes from their vein of constituents who tell them they don’t want a black man as our President.(I look forward to a book from the President after he leaves office in his second term.I hope he is brutally honest.But I suppose he won’t be able to tell us of all the death threats accompanied with racists comments to him and his family, as he will have to protect his family’s safety.)
I am not happy with President Obama when it comes to some issues, but it doesn't mean that I take license to step into the land of bigots.
GENOCIDE IN SUDAN IS A WAY OF LIFE (AND DEATH) - THE REASON I BLOG FOR PEACE ~ #8
SUDAN AREAS WHERE GENOCIDE IS HAPPENING
BLUE NILE, DARFUR, EASTERN SUDAN, NUBA MOUNTAINS and SOUTH SUDAN
As a community leader in Rhode Island, who works with other community leaders across the USA, in order to bring needed attention to genocide, preventing and stopping it, I have worked specifically with the dire situation in Sudan.
Ethnic cleansing, genocide of about 3,000,000 bodies in South Sudan, Darfur, Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile, Eastern Sudan just since Bashir came into power is proof of the world, including the USA, turning a blind eye and making "never again" meaningless two words. Two words that we have used at the end of previous genocides.The current Government of Sudan supports Sudanese regional genocides/ethnic cleansings, which are focused on people who are black, have an African culture and those who've asked for government help.The victim targets' regions over the months and years have changed and multiplied in Sudan, however the strategy has not changed.
................................................................ One who worked in Sudan in a refugee camp (2005 to 2007), from 13:25 to 21:19.
John Prendergast of the Enough Project is introduced at 21:19 and speaks at 22:44 until 33:49.
Mohamed Yahya speaks at United Nations on the UN Webcast, Mohamed is from west Darfur, Sudan. His introduction and his comments are from 33:49 to 48:40.
51:48 begins the section of various contributions of "What You Wish For" book.
At 53:27 is a German author introduction via streaming by Skype at the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library Auditorium , followed by the introduction of each of the authors to speak.
At 1:00:13 the first author is supposed to be heard, but the audio is not audible for a while anyway.
Here is the explanation of the video above from the United Nations webcast ~
What You Wish For, a short story and poetry anthology for youth.
17 October 2011
Authors join Darfur experts and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) at the UN’s Dag Hammarskjöld Library Auditorium from 3-5 PM in celebration of the launch of What You Wish For, a short story and poetry anthology for youth.
The event co-hosted by the United Nations Office for Partnerships will feature Darfur experts John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project and author of Unlikely Brothers: Our Story of Adventure, Loss, and Redemption, and Mohamed Yahya, co-founder of Damanga. The Director of UNHCR’s Executive Office in New York, Udo Janz, and Senior Policy Advisor Grainne O’Hara will also speak.
Running time: 02:02:05
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"They Bombed Everything that Moved"
Aerial military attacks on civilians and humanitarians in Sudan,
Since this report and data spreadsheet were originally released on May 6, 2011, the Sudan Armed Forces---at the direction of the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party regime in Khartoum---have continued their aerial onslaught against civilians in various regions of North Sudan. This savagery has now spread from South Kordofan to another northern border state, Blue Nile. At the same time, civilian villages in Darfur, without any military presence, continue to be targeted. I have argued that in aggregate, these many hundreds of confirmed, deliberate aerial attacks on civilians and humanitarians---going back more than a decade---constitute crimes against humanity. So, too, does the widespread, systematic denial of humanitarian access on an ethnic basis, something the UN first reported in Darfur in 2003 (in South Sudan the Nuba Mountains this had begun over a decade earlier). And yet these tactics, which have defined the military strategy of the Khartoum regime for so long, show no signs of being curtailed. Nor is there any sign that these atrocity crimes will confront meaningful action by international actors, who know full well their deadly consequences---and hence the consequences of their own acquiescence.
In South Kordofan the bombing continues to be particularly intense in the Nuba Mountains, and for months has prevented planting and tending of crops; continued bombing now endangers even a meager harvest. Khartoum has prevented all international humanitarian access to a vast population that is now squarely facing starvation. Many people have made the dangerous trek to South Sudan, some 8,000 as of mid-September, and the UN High Commission for Refugees estimated at the time that there were some 500 new arrivals per day.
Civilians in Blue Nile---another region with a long history of marginalization, violence, and tyranny at the hands of the NIF/NCP regime---are consistently reported as enduring daily bombing attacks. Civilian casualties have been high and the number of civilians displaced by bombardment is enormous. Elected governor Malik Agar estimates that half of Blue Nile's 1.2 million people are now on the move. This is harvest season and it appears increasingly unlikely that those forced from their lands by aerial military violence will be able to survive without international humanitarian aid---which Khartoum has again denied categorically.
Lacking food and humanitarian assistance, and facing increasing violence, civilians from Blue Nile have begun to pour into neighboring Ethiopia, with no end to the exodus in sight:
"The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says 27,500 people have fled the conflict in Blue Nile State to nearby Ethiopia since early September. The agency is due to open a second camp 200km from the border with a capacity of 3,000 people, as fighting and SAF aerial bombardments continue." (UN Integrated Regional Information Networks [IRIN] [dateline: Kurmuk], October 13, 2011)
In South Kordofan, the SPLA/M-North leader Abdel Aziz el-Hilu reports that as many as 500,000 Nuba have been displaced, and he has assembled locality data to support this claim. The actual figure for displaced persons can't be known, but now---after more than four months of intense bombings---it is almost certainly more than 300,000, and the number of conflict-affected civilians much greater. Khartoum's military assaults on Abyei (May 20), South Kordofan (June 5), and Blue Nile (September 1) may now have displaced 1 million civilians.
Origins and character of conflict in Blue Nile
Violence in Blue Nile was initiated by Khartoum's Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) on September 1, 2011 in yet another well-prepared assault. Such an assault was predicted in a previous iteration of this update (July 15, 2011), as it was by the elected governor of Blue Nile, Malik Agar. Malik insisted to all who would listen that the longer conflict and ethnic targeting of civilians continued in South Kordofan, the more likely it was that Blue Nile would be drawn into the fighting. Unsurprisingly, Malik's residence in Damazine was the first target of SAF shelling. Such shelling has now extended southward toward Kurmuk as Khartoum increasingly engages in "stand-off" military actions against the forces so effectively led by Malik (the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement-North; SPLA/M-N). Large-scale, long-range, and indiscriminate shelling has many of the same effects as aerial bombardment by Antonov aircraft, which are inherently incapable of achieving bombing accuracy sufficient to be militarily effective. It is now the greatest fear of many on the ground in Blue Nile. UN IRIN reports from Kurmuk (October 12, 2011):
"The priority is to move patients from the hospital as quickly as possible, either back home or across the border to Ethiopia where other aid agencies can care for them. 'The fear that an Antonov might bomb [the hospital] is terrible,' [Dr. Evan] Atar said, adding: 'Most of the people who were injured are people who were running. The bomb usually explodes upwards in a conical form, so if you keep down you are fine.'"
But fear in such circumstances can be extremely difficult to control; and the fact that Khartoum is notorious for its deliberate bombing of hospitals is widely known among the people who endured more than 20 years of civil war (see original May 6 report, pp. 14 - 15, 23 - 24). Moreover, as Dr. Atar also notes:
"'In the [civil] war, there was peace in the villages; now they [the Antonovs] bomb even the villages---that's the problem; and the increasing accuracy of the bombing is leading to rising patient numbers as the weeks go by.'" (UN IRIN [dateline: Kurmuk], October 12, 2011)
While still not sufficiently accurate to be militarily effective, there have been repeated reports of Antonovs increasing their accuracy through crude bomb-sighting mechanisms, and their destructiveness by using bombs with greater explosive power.
Atar, who is the only doctor in Kurmuk, notes the connection between bombing and shelling by Khartoum's SAF and the looming food shortages: "Food would also become a problem [ ]. 'First of all the war will continue and the second thing is, now, hunger will come and it is not going to spare anyone unless the people go and become refugees to be helped, but for the people left within, it is going to be a big problem.' Artillery fire directed at rebels could be the last straw. 'For now it is the Antonov bombing, but I don't think I would be here if there is shelling ... and no patients could be brought here,' Atar said" (emphasis added) (UN IRIN October 12). And even now, a major SAF force is on the move toward Kurmuk. A highly alarming report from the Satellite Sentinel Project (September 23), based on substantial satellite photography, indicates a massive formation of armor, troops, and military aircraft: "heavily camouflaged, mechanized units comprising at least a brigade---3,000 troops or more"; "these forces appear to be equipped with heavy armor and artillery, supported by helicopter gunships." Once they are in artillery range, they will likely engage in annihilating shelling, which will compel the SPLA/N to withdraw or risk large numbers of casualties among civilians who have remained (a rapidly dwindling number).
"Anima's eyes flicker and weep as the doctor sews up the stump of his left arm, before he rolls back on the hospital bed, one of the latest victims in Sudan's relentless bombing campaign in Blue Nile state. Dr Evan Atar says he has done seven amputations since war broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and fighters loyal to the SPLM-North in Blue Nile state last month. He has treated more than 600 others for shrapnel wounds. 'We are really now running out of supplies. We have been running here and there and crying.... But now where to get it from is really an issue,' he said. President Omar al-Bashir has blocked foreign aid agencies from entering Blue Nile and nearby South Kordofan state, where a separate conflict between the army and SPLM-North rebels has raged since June."
"Kurmuk's is the only hospital between neighbouring Ethiopia and Damazin ... and Dr Atar is the only doctor. He says the hospital will run out of vital supplies such as saline solution, cotton and gauze this week if no aid arrives, after using up six months' supplies in one [month]. In another hospital bed, 65-year-old Altom Osman is recovering from a deep shrapnel wound in his back and one in his arm after a bomb hit the village of Sali an hour north of Kurmuk. 'I was taking some sorghum flour to my wife. We were passing our farm and then the Antonov came immediately and bombed,' Osman whispered."
As of January 2010, the annual salary of each Representative is $174,000.[17] The Speaker of the House and the Majority and Minority Leaders earn more: $223,500 for the Speaker and $193,400 for their party leaders (the same as Senate leaders). A cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) increase takes effect annually unless Congress votes to not accept it. Congress sets members' salaries; however, the Twenty-seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits a change in salary (but not COLA[18]) from taking effect until after the next general election. Representatives are eligible for lifetime benefits after serving for five years, including a pension, health benefits, and social security benefits.
Those politicians who like to support the rich ("no tax increase" comment today means for the top 1% of USA) and take away our rights to unionize (Wisconsin, is one example), also can vote on their own salary amount, retirement benefits, health care benefits. Can you say the same about your career, job?
Rank-and-File Members: The current salary (2011) for rank-and-file members of the House and Senate is $174,000 per year.
Members are free to turn down pay increase and some choose to do so.
In a complex system of calculations, administered by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, congressional pay rates also affect the salaries for federal judges and other senior government executives.
During the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin considered proposing that elected government officials not be paid for their service. Other Founding Fathers, however, decided otherwise.
From 1789 to 1855, members of Congress received only a per diem (daily payment) of $6.00 while in session, except for a period from December 1815 to March 1817, when they received $1,500 a year. Members began receiving an annual salary in 1855, when they were paid $3,000 per year.
Congress: Leadership Members' Salary (2011)
Leaders of the House and Senate are paid a higher salary than rank-and-file members.
Senate Leadership Majority Party Leader - $193,400
Minority Party Leader - $193,400
House Leadership Speaker of the House - $223,500
Majority Leader - $193,400
Minority Leader - $193,400
A cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) increase takes effect annually unless Congress votes to not accept it.
Benefits Paid to Members of Congress
You may have read that Members of Congress do not pay into Social Security. Well, that's a myth.
Prior to 1984, neither Members of Congress nor any other federal civil service employee paid Social Security taxes. Of course, they were also not eligible to receive Social Security benefits. Members of Congress and other federal employees were instead covered by a separate pension plan called the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS). The 1983 amendments to the Social Security Act required federal employees first hired after 1983 to participate in Social Security. These amendments also required all Members of Congress to participate in Social Security as of January 1, 1984, regardless of when they first entered Congress. Because the CSRS was not designed to coordinate with Social Security, Congress directed the development of a new retirement plan for federal workers. The result was the Federal Employees' Retirement System Act of 1986.
Members of Congress receive retirement and health benefits under the same plans available to other federal employees. They become vested after five years of full participation.
As it is for all other federal employees, congressional retirement is funded through taxes and the participants' contributions. Members of Congress under FERS contribute 1.3 percent of their salary into the FERS retirement plan and pay 6.2 percent of their salary in Social Security taxes.
Members of Congress are not eligible for a pension until they reach the age of 50, but only if they've completed 20 years of service. Members are eligible at any age after completing 25 years of service or after they reach the age of 62. Please also note that Members of Congress have to serve at least 5 years to even receive a pension.
The amount of a congressperson's pension depends on the years of service and the average of the highest 3 years of his or her salary. By law, the starting amount of a Member's retirement annuity may not exceed 80% of his or her final salary.
According to the Congressional Research Service, 413 retired Members of Congress were receiving federal pensions based fully or in part on their congressional service as of Oct. 1, 2006. Of this number, 290 had retired under CSRS and were receiving an average annual pension of $60,972. A total of 123 Members had retired with service under both CSRS and FERS or with service under FERS only. Their average annual pension was $35,952 in 2006.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS, NOW, UNITED CORPORATIONS OF AMERICA. THIS is okay(?), but unions are not okay?
The Starz television channel now has the documentary movie Inside Job by Charles Ferguson, as an "on demand" premiere offering through August 16, 2011 It is not only a worthwhile use of an hour and 50 minutes, it is a "must see". While we lower and middle income people go about surviving, these corporate big wigs have bought their way into owning the politicians, we supposedly have elected. The lobbyists for these firms number 5 per congressperson. Who do you think our elected politicians listen to? For years, they have had the laws written in their favor - so that the top 1 per cent can have their millions and billions protected, while we the low and middle income people are the metaphorical dirt they walk on.
Only we can change this. They own our politicians. The Tea Party is not going to save the rest of us from this fast moving direction to kill our rights to unionize, have decent wages, protective work places and clean air, water and dirt.
Other "on demand" viewing that I highly recommend are *HBO documentary Triangle: Remembering the Fire (40 minutes) through August 8, 2011 *HBO documentary Mann v Ford (1 hour and 46 minutes) through September 12, 2011.
Photos of Bombardment killing Nuba Indigenous People in Kurchi village (Sudan).
Sudan ~ where President Obama once said the Darfur genocide must be stopped. Now, he supports those who commit the genocide (Khartoum), because of politics.
"These photos were taken on Sunday, 26th June, (2011) in Kurchi village in the Nuba Mountains by Younis Jamal, a field officer with Nuba Relief and Rehabilitation and Development Organization, the sister organization of the SPLA/M (NRRDO), who wants them to be circulated widely, so the world can see what the Sudanese military is doing to unarmed civilians in South Kordofan.
Sudan's Al-Bashir is distinguishing himself by conducting three ethnic cleansings simultaneously; Darfur, Abyei and South Kordofan. Nothing stops him."
I sometimes write the President about genocide in Sudan. Three times I got a reply, but that was in the early days of his administration.
Tonight I wrote the letter below via www.whitehouse.gov/contact. Politicians claim that when you vote for them and they win that they have a mandate from the people. But assumption is presumptuous. So often, we vote against someone and not for someone.
July 4, 2011
Dear President Obama,
I believe compassion and empathy are the best of our human quallities As a human being who has worked since 2004 to bring attention to the Darfur genocide, I have watched as two USA administrations, the Bush and Obama, have stood idly by while Darfuris & now Sudanese in the Nuba Mountains region of South Kordofan get bombed by Khartoum. Your administration has chosen to side with Khartoum. I want to let you know that your administration has left me thoroughly frustrated and angry.
Never before had I involved myself in a campaign until your first one for President. I gave money to your campaign repeatedly, though I could not afford it. I rented a car to drive from where I reside in Rhode Island to volunteer to go door-to-door in NH for the week running up to the NH primary. I worked here in RI doing the same, but more comprehensively. I phone banked for you in NJ.
I say all this to tell you this: I cannot vote for a Republican for President this next election. But I cannot do any of the things that I did previously for your campaign this time. Why? I hope you get this letter and wonder that very question.You had me believing that your word was dependable. You had me believing you would be a President that I could be proud of.But I no longer believe that. I have watched you very closely-what you have said and done and what you haven’t said and done. My feelings of being betrayed by you started soon after Scott Gration spoke once you appointed him Special Envoy to Sudan. He obviously spoke for you. And he chose supporting Khartoum over the people Khartoum systematically has been eliminating.
I will be forced to vote against the Republican Presidential candidate this time and that will mean I will have to vote for you. I want you to know though you will get my vote, however you have lost something more important. My respect for you. And my trust in what you say that you will do. I made a small film for a Compassion Film Festival, DARFUR – THE ABANDONED GENOCIDE, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YG-6mQx8jI
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and in the film, it has you saying over and over what led me to believe that you would not let the people down of Darfur.But you have done just that. No President that I can put my trust in would have done this.
The Darfur genocide “IS a stain on our souls”, as you said once. And genocide will go on as long as there is no accountability. Whenever you have a choice between right and wrong about genocide as a leader, there is only one that should allow you to sleep.
Sandra Hammel
This appears after you click "Send"~
Thank you for contacting the White House.
President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible Administration in history. That begins with taking comments and questions from you, the American people, through our website.
The U.N. peacekeeping mission UNMIS has been a part of the problem in South Kordofan, where many Nuba, although northern Sudanese, joined south Sudan’s war for a democratic “New Sudan.” Established in March 2005, after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement ended the 22-year civil war, the mission was headed until 2010 by a man who colleagues say was given to calling the Nuba “monkeys.” On his watch, the lack of initiative of UNMIS and perceived complicity with Khartoum was a cause of deep frustration, and anger, to its most committed staff. UNMIS was also spectacularly uninformed about the reality of South Kordofan.
In 2008, I published a report that detailed the resurgence of government-supported militias in South Kordofan – including in a village called Al-Fayd – and concluded that “many now view war in the Nuba Mountains as inevitable.” UNMIS pooh-poohed the report, which it said was “far from the reality on the ground.” Fast-forward to April this year, on the eve of war, and an attack by militia who, according to UNMIS, “killed … looted … burnt houses and raped.” The village? Al-Fayd.
How little UNMIS knew. How little it cared to know! And how it has come to haunt the mission now that its own men are, in its own words, facing increasing “intimidation and obstruction” in South Kordofan – including from the militias it said did not exist.
July 3, 2011 — Over the past four weeks, Government of Sudan (GoS) troops and allied militia have carried out a vicious and murderous attack on the people of the Nuba Mountains in the Sudanese state of South Kordafan. This is the very same government that perpetrated genocide in Darfur and continues to carry out devastating attacks on the region. Tellingly, Sudan’s president, Omer Al-Bashir, is already wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for the atrocities perpetrated in Darfur.
MIGs and Antonov bombers have created havoc in the Nuba Mountains; farms, tukuls, and churches have been burned to the ground; close to 100,000 people have been forced from their villages out into the wilderness and up into barren mountains; and untold numbers have been killed.
In Kadugli, the capital of South Kordafan, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) have gone door to door in search of suspected members and supporters of the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) and executed them on the spot. GoS troops have also planted land mines throughout the area. In Dilling, GoS soldiers carried out their own search for members and supporters of the SPLM and upon locating them slit their throats.
While there are UN troops (United Nations Mission in Sudan or UNMIS) in the Nuba Mountains they have largely served no purpose. If truth be told, they are actually exacerbating the situation. First, they do little more than largely observe the violence and certainly nothing to attempt to halt it. Second, two sources inside the Nuba Mountains, both of whom must remain unnamed, reported that Egyptian soldiers with UNMIS were seen raping local women in Kadugli as the latter sought sanctuary from the surrounding violence. Third, when a massive group of civilians sought assistance at UNMIS headquarters in Kadugli they were purportedly told to leave and go to Dilling, some 120 miles away — a horrific journey on foot in the face of the ongoing attacks. Finally, there are reports that UNMIS personnel told people to head north when seeking safety, thus apparently leading them directly into the hands of the GoS troops. It is no wonder that rumors are afloat that those Egyptian soldiers with UNMIS are on the payroll of Khartoum.
Various reasons are aswirl as to why GoS troops attacked the people of the Nuba Mountains. First, some four weeks ago, Al-Bashir threatened that if the people of the region did not readily accept the newly elected Ahmed Haroun, who is wanted by the ICC on over 40 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes for the horrors perpetrated in Darfur, as their governor, they would suffer the consequences. In fact, in a speech in Kadugli, Al-Bashir stated that his soldiers would chase the Nuba people up into the mountains as they did in the 1990s, leaving them without food to starve to death once again. Second, when members of the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), who, along with the vast majority of people in the Nuba Mountains, voiced their vast disappointment that Abdel Aziz, a popular and former commander of the SLPA, had been cheated out of the governorship as a result of a rigged election and also refused to take off their uniforms when ordered to do so, GoS troops attacked them. Third, many believe that the real reason behind the attack is that Al-Bashir wants to gain absolute control over South Kordafan and the border area with South Sudan in order to strengthen his hand in negotiations over Abeyi, a oil rich region straddling the border between the north and the south. Finally, there are rumors that Al-Bashir wishes to gain control of as much land as possible along the border, an area that is poorly demarcated, as he also prepares for future negotiations with the new state of South Sudan.
Al-Bashir’s propensity for killing those with whom he disagrees, who question his authority and/or policies, who challenge his dictates, whose land he desires, and/or who he looks upon with distain and wants gone is well documented. He’s done it previously in the Nuba Mountains (in the 1990s when he carried out genocidal acts and virtually starved people to death), in Darfur between 2003 and today during which over 400,000 blacks Africans perished, and he is back at it once again in the Nuba Mountains. And the world should never forget or overlook the fact that just because the Comprehensive Peace Agreement has been signed by the north and south, Al-Bashir, as president of Sudan, oversaw a large part of the north-south war that resulted in some two million deaths.
Clearly, Al-Bashir specializes in perpetrating crimes against humanity, genocidal actions, and genocide, and he does so whenever he wishes in the belief that he can do so with impunity — the ICC or any other court or tribunal be damned.
For the sake of the people of the Nuba Mountains, for the sake of civilization, for the sake of our own decency, we, and the rest of the world, must show Omar Al-Bashir that he is wrong — and that impunity does not reign.
Samuel Totten is a genocide scholar based at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. He served as one of the 24 investigators with the U.S. Atrocities Documentation Project in eastern Chad. His most recent book is An Oral and Documentary History of the Darfur Genocide (Praeger Security International, 2010). He was last in the Nuba Mountains in January 2011 conducting research for a new book, Genocidal Actions Against the Nuba Mountains People: Interviews with Survivors of Mass Starvation and Other Atrocities.
By MAGGIE FICK, Associated Press – Monday July 4, 8:45 am USA ET, 2011
JUBA, Sudan – Sudan's president will speak at independence celebrations in the south this weekend, officials said Monday, just days after he vowed to continue a military offensive in a border region.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir supported the January referendum that paved the way for the oil-rich south to secede and become the world's newest country on Saturday.
However, recent tensions in the border state of South Kordofan and the disputed region of Abyei have raised fears that the split could be a violent one.
The southern government said Monday that 30 African heads of state including al-Bashir will travel to Juba for this weekend's celebrations. British Foreign Secretary William Hague and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also are expected to attend.
Many issues remains unresolved around the split including oil rights and wealth sharing. Representatives from both sides spent have spent weeks negotiating in Ethiopia's capital.
Two decades of civil war with northern Sudan decimated the oil-rich south and left more than 2 million dead on both sides.
The south lacks infrastructure and basic services, is aid-dependent and suffers from frequent floods during its five-month-long rainy season.
Despite its rich oil reserves, the south has no refineries and must transport its oil through pipelines to a northern port on the Red Sea.
Al-Bashir said in a June 22 speech that he would block the south's access to the pipelines unless a favorable wealth-sharing agreement was reached.
U.N. peacekeepers are in the northern border state of South Kordofan, but a spokesman for the Sudanese government said Sunday they should leave immediately after the south becomes independent.
Such a move could leave tens of thousands of southern-supporting civilians without U.N. protection. A U.N. spokeswoman in Southern Sudan said any such decision would be made by the U.N. Security Council.
Tensions in the area have displaced more than 70,000 people.
Western advocacy groups have warned that al-Bashir's government is attempting ethnic cleansing and even genocide in the region against the Nuba people, a black African group targeted in the 1990s in government-sponsored violence that left as many 200,000 Nubans dead.
My opinion: The Nobel Peace Prize for President Obama was premature, to say the least.
October 9, 2009 Obama: Nobel Peace Prize is 'call to action'
President Obama said Friday that he was "surprised and deeply humbled" by the decision of the Norwegian Nobel Committee to award him the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.
The committee said it honored Obama for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."
Obama said he viewed the decision less as a recognition of his own accomplishments and more as "a call to action."
The decision appeared to catch most observers by surprise. Nominations for the prize had to be postmarked by February 1, only 12 days after Obama took office. The committee sent out its solicitation for nominations last September, two months before Obama was elected president.
I love my life. I love where I live. And I am passionate about my passions. I love to dance. Necessary to live: music, piano, singing, writing, acting, painting.
I have been fighting for and supporting the arts all my adult life. Since 2004, I have been working with other activists to end the Darfur genocide.
I have traveled to Europe many times since my early twenties. Places I have been: many USA states including Hawaii, Montreal, Canada, Barbados, France, Spain, Luxembourg, England, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and Germany - and have wonderful memories.
My last trip was in May - June 2013 to Spain.
I would like to travel to Europe and Kyoto, Japan.
I love the southwest where I have visited Hopi, Navajo, Zia and San Idlefonso potters.
Life is exciting and I intend to live it full-out to the end.
B.S. and M.M., both in music
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Khartoum, Sudan Stop Genocide Time
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RAFA NADAL -BRING BACK LONG PANTS - SLEEVELESS TOPS
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Genocide is not only a word,
it is crying of the whole human race.
There is nothing redeeming about being silent
when speaking up is the humane thing to do.
The honor and integrity of the human race is at stake.
