Guys/Gals, I want to appeal for your help. Major slave raids are slated in the Sudan next month by the NIF Government. Please pick up your phone and call your congressional representative and ask for her/him to seek UN intervention before the raids occur....
News Article by AFP on January 28, 1999 at 18:02:20:
Swiss agency buys freedom for Sudanese slaves ·
"GENEVA, Jan 28 (AFP) - Some 1,050 people in Sudan, mainly women and children, have been released from slavery after a Swiss aid agency paid 50 dollars each for their freedom, the agency said in
Geneva on Thursday. ·
Christian Solidarity International (CSI), which has "bought
back" a total of 5,066 slaves in Sudan over the last four years,
also repeated an appeal for action to the United Nations. ·
This latest group was freed earlier this month in the southern
Bahr-el-Ghazal province of Sudan, a country where the Christian and
animist south is fighting the Arab and Moslem-dominated government
in Khartoum. ·
The money was paid to Arab traders who work with the agency and
who find the slaves in the north, then bring them back to the
south. ·
CSI belives thousands of people have been abducted during raids
by pro-governmental militias in the south to be sold into slavery in
the north. ·
Witnesses among those freed have spoken of various forms of
physical and psychological ill-treatment, including cut throats,
excision, death threats, forced conversions to Islam and beatings,
the agency reported. ·
CSI said that big raids were planned for next month and appealed
to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the UN Human Rights
Commissioner, Mary Robinson, to intervene. ·
The organization works under the terms of 1990 peace accords
reached between Sudanese Arabs and members of the Dinka community, which called on the Arabs to help Dinkas recover women and children sold into slavery." |
