Sudanese gather in New York to urge the UN to stop ‘ethnic cleansing’
in S. Kordofan
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By Gisela Perez-Mauri
August 8, 2011 (NEW YORK) — About one hundred Sudanese and South
Sudanese citizens gathered outside the United Nations on Friday to
push the international community to take action on ongoing killings
and bombings in Sudan’s South Kordofan, a state bordering South Sudan,
after reports of heavy fighting in June and satellite images of
alleged mass graves last month.
JPEG - 51.6 kb
Residents gather outside the UNMIS sector headquarters after fleeing
fighting in Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan, Sudan, Thursday,
June 9, 2011 (AP Photos)
"I’m begging for help from the UN to impose a no-fly zone in the Nuba
Mountains and stop the killings," said Abdul Basha, a 37 year-old man
from that region in South Kordofan, who held a sign with pictures of
dead bodies found in the violently stricken Sudanese state.
Basha, who came to the United States as a refugee seven years ago,
lost his mother in the June bombings, just one week after he left his
homeland after a ten-day visit. Since then, he has not heard about his
father, who he thinks disappeared during the fighting in the region.
A recent UN report referred to summary executions, aerial bombardments
and shelling of neighborhoods by both pro-southern rebel groups and
the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), but qualifying SAF actions as
"especially egregious". The UN has warned about possible war crimes
and crimes against humanity.
Hikma Koko, 18, is a refugee from the Nuba Mountains who came to the
United States with his mother, father and siblings in 2000. Most of
Koko’s family still lives in the hard-hit region. She thinks that Omer
Al-Bashir, the Sudanese President who has expressed his intention to
create an Islamic state, is carrying out “ethnic cleansing” in this
mainly pro-South, non-Muslim region.
"The situation is getting worse everyday, people don’t have jobs and
they are segregated in their own country. It’s like they were second
class citizens," said Koko quoting members of her family in the Nuba
Mountains.
Demonstrators carrying signs of "end genocide, save lives", "stop
killing the Nuba children" or "racist regime in Sudan must go," were
screaming "Al-Bashir to ICC" –recalling that the International
Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant to the Sudanese President for
alleged genocide and crimes against humanity during the separate
conflict in Darfur.
While Sudanese activists were rallying outside the UN, Reverend Andudu
Adam Elnail, an Anglican Bishop of South Kordofan, met Security
Council members to urge them to stop what he also defines as "ethnic
cleansing".
"We need the Security Council to push the Khartoum Government to sit
with the two parties and agree to a ceasefire. We need peace in
Sudan," he said. "Then, people will be able to eat and talk," said
Elnail, in reference to recent reports of expulsion of humanitarian
aid agencies from South Kordofan.
Peggy Hicks, Global Advocacy Director at Human Rights Watch, who also
spoke to the press, emphasized that it is difficult to get a sense of
the "horrendous abuses" that are going on in South Kordofan because of
the lack of international media and humanitarian staff in the region.
However, she said that it is "cynical that the lack of information
means that there needs to be inaction by the UN" in the area.
"If the Security Council wants more information on what’s going on,
they are responsible for ensuring access to South Kordofan," she said
forcefully.
Hicks alerted about the need to end what some UN staff members and
reporters may know as "Sudan fatigue", since ethnic and religious
tensions in the African country have long been in the Security Council
agenda.
"What message do we send to human rights perpetrators? Keep up!," she
said angrily. "Fatigue does not apply to address mass atrocities in
South Kordofan," she said, after reminding that some 200,000 people
are thought to have fled the area since the aerial bombardments,
artillery shelling and extra-judicial killings began in June.
(ST)
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