Ray, My favorite Islamic apologist- are you still willing to tell me how good the Arab Muslim presence has been for east Africans?? Read this.. And my offer to arrange for you to meet the top SPLA Representative in the USA stands if you'd like to hear the truth directly from the mouth of an East African that Arab Muslim slave traders routinely kidnap African children, sexually abuse them , and sell them into slavery in to Saudi Arabia and Mauretania...
GOV'T Solicits Arab Support to Quell Rebellion
News Article by IPS on October 24, 1998 at 10:52:19:
GOV'T Solicits Arab Support to Quell Rebellion
Inter Press Service
23-OCT-98
HARARE, Oct. 21 IPS - Sudan's TV and radio stations spend most of their air time these days appealing to the Arab world to help the Islamic regime in Khartoum protect the country against rebels fighting in the south.
The campaign, which also has been echoed by pro-government newspapers, heightened after the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) captured last month a string of garrison towns in southern Sudan's eastern Equatoria region, on the border with Kenya and Uganda.
Sudanese army spokesman, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Rahman Sirul-Khatim, claims that troops from Uganda, Eritrea, Rwanda and Tanzania helped the SPLA to seize the garrisons.
"There is no truth in those claims at all," said Barnaba Benjamin, who is the SPLA representative in Southern Africa.
He told IPS in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare that Khartoum was using the "foreign invasion" claims to attract "material and political support" from the Arab world, following the capture of eight small garrisons in the towns of Lirya and Jebeleen, 64 km east of the main southern town of Juba on Sept. 14.
"The aim of the regime is to turn the conflict (in Southern Sudan) into a racial war between Arabs and Africans," he said. "The whole exercise of the Arab rulers in Khartoum is to win support from their fellow Arabs in the Arab League so as to join the fight against the Africans in the Sudan".
The SPLA has been fighting since 1983 for self-determination for the south's Christians and adherents of African traditional religions from the Muslim, Arab-led north.
About two million people, mostly non-combatants, have died in the fighting since 1983, aid agencies report. According to official estimates, Arabs comprise 39 percent of Sudan's more than 30 million people, while blacks are 52 percent of the population.
The current offensive in eastern Equatoria erupted in early September. Benjamin said the aim is to advance towards Juba and capture the town.
He said the conflict between the north and south, which has been on and off since 1955, is rooted in the north's resolve to impose Arab and Islamic cultures on the south.
According to Benjamin, the "discrimination" also applies to employment. "Black Sudanese are not represented in the Arab League secretariat (in Cairo, Egypt)," he claimed. "To appoint them in the secretariat would, in the eyes of the (Sudanese) Arabs, amount to demeaning Sudan's Arab and Islamic character".
An estimated 60 to 70 percent of the Sudanese population is Muslim.
Neither has a southerner ever held the "strategic" portfolios of finance, defense, foreign affairs and justice, since Sudan became independence from Britain and Egypt in 1956, said Benjamin.
The highest public office a southerner has ever occupied is that of the second vice-president. "The idea is that if the president dies, the southerner will not succeed him. The post of the first vice president is always reserved for an Arab Muslim," he said.
Sudan's current second vice president is George Kongor, a southerner. But the real power lies with Osman Taha, the first vice president. "This is the kind of Arab chauvinism we have been fighting in the Sudan," said Benjamin.
But Ali al Haj, a top Sudanese official, disagreed. He said holding public office in the Sudan is not based on race or religion, but on citizenship.
Theoretically, under its Sudan Charter of January 1987, the ruling National Islamic Front (NIF) -- to which al Haj is a senior member -- accepts that a non-Muslim can be eligible for any office within the state, including head of state, although "religiousness in general may be taken into consideration as a factor of the candidate's integrity."
The issues of race and religion have stalled all efforts to end Sudan's conflict, which the SPLA leader Colonel John Garang said is costing the Sudan government $2.5 million a day to keep its army in the south.
Relations between the two races -- Arab northerners and black southerners -- have further been strained by the allegations of slavery in the Sudan.
"There has been a resurgence in slavery since the war erupted in 1983. Raiders loot and burn cattle and grain, and take women and children to work as forced unpaid labor in their households and fields, or to sell informally," said the Human Rights Watch report of March 1998 on Sudan. "Many are beaten and sexually abused."
The New York-based group said although the government has denied allegations of slavery, it has refused to consider a program, suggested by Human Rights Watch with the assistance of the Red Cross and U.N. Children's Fund (Unicef), to set up mechanisms to search for kidnapped Sudanese children and women and reunite them with their families.
The Swiss-based rights group "Christian Solidarity International" (CSI) said recently it "bought freedom for over 400 people of the Dinka tribe" who were taken slaves by Arabs in the north. The Dinka, to which the SPLA leader Garang belongs, is the largest ethnic group in southern Sudan.
Benjamin said the solution to Sudan's conflict lies in self- determination for the people of the south, who make up over 30 percent of Sudan's population. |
