Robert, Thank you New York Times for continuing to focus on the largest, longest war on the planet - and that is in the Sudan...
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News Article by NY TIMES on April 25, 1999 at 03:51:17:
Selling Sudan's Slaves Into Freedom
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Sunday, April 25, 1999
By IAN FISHER
YARGUT, Sudan -- Over the last few years, evidence has solidified that slavery not only exists, but may be widespread in parts of Sudan. On a recent day in this village, there seemed little to dispute that. Seated under trees, were several hundred women and children. They told stories of abduction and rape and tending goats for their captors.
But there has been growing scrutiny over the kind of transaction that
followed.
"That's 1 million," John Eibner, a quietly intense American, said as he
reached into a bag fat with Sudanese money. "That's 2 million."
He was counting out cash to pay a trader for 535 of the slaves, Dinka
people from the south taken captive by Arabs from the north. The cost: 26.8 million Sudanese pounds, about $27,000, or $50 a person, the price of two goats. In a week, Eibner, an official with a Swiss group called Christian Solidarity International, bought freedom for 1,783 slaves -- by far the greatest number since he started coming to Sudan in 1995.
As the number of redeemed slaves and groups trekking to the war zone of southern Sudan to free them has risen, the practice is coming under fire. Critics say that redemption, which began locally in the early 1990s, is becoming big business, and that people like Eibner may even be inadvertently encouraging slave raids.
"Once the numbers started to increase drastically, that caused people who follow the slavery issue to have a look at what is really going on," said Jemera Rone, counsel for Human Rights Watch in Washington.
Ms. Rone recently wrote a paper accusing the Sudanese government of using slave raids as a weapon in its 15-year war with southern rebels and warning of the dangers of redemption. She worries that unscrupulous middlemen -- traders who bring the slaves back south -- may increase profits by packing groups of slaves with "borrowed" children, and that peace in Sudan may be discouraged if raiders have a financial incentive to keep the war going.
Last month, the U.N. Children's Fund also raised some questions, partly in response to the American schoolchildren, in Massachusetts, Colorado and Oregon, who raise money for the cause.
"We want to try to deal with ending slavery as a fundamental change within Sudan, rather than having to watch human beings being bought and sold," said Stephen Lewis, UNICEF's deputy executive director.
He said UNICEF officials were working with Sudan -- which denies slavery exists but concedes "tribal" hostage-taking -- to allow a study of slavery and a mechanism for freeing captives. "We have to get rid of the practice, period," he said. "We need a political solution."
Caroline Cox, who runs a British group that redeems slaves, acknowledged that redemptions were "a gray area" but said they were unavoidable. "We justify it by saying: It's not the answer but I don't think you can look a child in the face and say, 'I'm sorry, you have to remain a slave until there is a political solution,"' she said.
Eibner, whose group claims to have freed 7,725 slaves since 1995, also sees redemptions as imperfect but necessary.
"Knowing that tens of thousands of people are still enslaved and knowing that we can get them out," he said, "I couldn't live with myself and say, 'Sorry, I'm stopping because of some criticism from an ivory tower in London or New York."' Eibner, 46, is a native of Valhalla, N.Y., who lives in Geneva.
He was standing in a field between two groups of women and children who said, in interviews, that they had been escorted south after spending as long as five years in the north.
Experts say slavery has long existed to some extent in Sudan, often
involving Muslim masters and slaves who are Christians or animists. But, they say, the raids picked up in the late 1980s along with fighting
between north and south. According to a recent U.N. report, an Arab
militia known as the muruhaleen and the People's Defense Force, both aligned with the government, guard a train that runs from the capital of Khartoum in the north to Wau, a government garrison in the south.
Within 30 miles of either side of the track, these forces raid Dinka
villages, mostly to steal cattle. But they also take hundreds of captives
to carry booty and to be used, the U.N. report alleges, for "cooking,
cultivation, tending to animals, collecting firewood, washing clothes and other domestic chores."
The report, by the U.N. special envoy to Sudan, also alleges "rape, forced 'marriage' and other sexual abuse amounting, in some cases, to sexual slavery."
The stories of the women and children, in three groups interviewed over several days, were consistent. Achol Tong Nyan, a Dinka woman about 27 years old, sat on the ground holding a baby whose bronze skin was lighter than hers. The girl, she said, was the result of rape by her master, Ishmael.
"What can I say?" she asked. "I will treat her as my child."
She said she had been captured about a year earlier in the town of
Warawar. Uniformed men on horses stormed the village.
She said 250 people were marched north. Ten died of thirst on the way. Another 20 were shot. One night, she said, she was raped by 10 men.
After spending time in a camp with other slaves in the town of Muglad, she said, she went to live with Ishmael. She slept in the kitchen, washed clothes, fetched water and was forced to have sex. Then, two weeks before she was redeemed, a trader visited. "I don't know what they paid Ishmael, but one day he called me in and introduced the trader," she said. "Ishmael said, 'He will take you back to your people."'
Thik Anon Thik, a tall and thin boy of 11, said he too was taken in a raid about a year ago, kidnapped with his mother and five siblings from a village called Kuiel. In the north he lived in a camp with other slaves
and tended goats. He said he was often beaten. One night a guard helped him escape, bringing him to one of the half-dozen traders Eibner works with. Their business is to go to Arab homes and camps in the north and offer money for the slaves, even though they say they would be arrested if discovered.
One trader, who uses the name Ahmed Bashir, said he bought the slaves for $20 to $80 and averaged about $10 in profit per slave. He and the other traders who deal with Eibner claim that they only buy slaves that will be freed.
Critics argue that such stories are so numerous, and the slaves' movement so hard to conceal, that the government must know about the trade, and may profit from it. Another suspicion is that southern officials, including the rebel groups, are getting a cut.
Defenders of redemption say it has, at a minimum, raised awareness about slavery in Sudan. Eibner defends the program by saying he will not pay more than $50 a person. He says he will stop if redemption evolves into a "free market."
"Slavery long predated CSI's presence here," he said, referring to his
organization. "There is no evidence that there is any more slavery since we started this. The fact is that slavery is not primarily economically motivated. The primary motive is political. The motive is the government using these slave raids as a way to wage war on these people." |
