
Rochelle Wilner President	Frank Dimant Chief Executive Officer	Prof. Stephen Scheinberg National Chair

Blacks & Jews in Dialogue

SUDAN IN CRISIS

By Norman L. Epstein

Prior to September 11, 2001, Colin Powell, U.S. Secretary of State was quoted as saying that the conflict and atrocities visited upon Black Sudanese is “unprecedented” anywhere else today in the world. Movement in the White House and the international community began to focus attention on this human tragedy. However, the events of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent War on Terrorism has placed this volatile problem on the backburner.

On October 29, 2001, Blacks and Jews in Dialogue heard an eloquent presentation from Manock Achuil Lual, co-ordinator of the Citizens’ Coalition for Human Rights in Sudan. He spoke of the deplorable human rights abuses that the Sudanese Arabs in the north have wreaked upon the Black majority in the south. In addition to harbouring terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, the Islamic Fundamentalist government in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, has terrorized the African population in the South by committing mass murder and abducting Africans as chattel slaves. Mr. Lual was able to put the tragic situation in context.

Sudan is a country with the largest land-mass in Africa, approximately 2.5 kilometers squared. The population is comprised of Africans (60%), Arabs(39%) and European (1%). When the British and Egyptian colonists departed the scene in the 1950s, political and economic control was acquired by the Arab minority in the North. They have used this power to subjugate and deny rights to the African majority. The African groups have been resisting this ruthless apartheid since independence. For the 35 years of its 45 year existence, Sudan has only known civil war and unbearable human suffering. 2.5 million people have been killed or starved to death and countless others have been left destitute and homeless.

Another compounding element of the conflict is that the Arabs of the North have used their political clout to define Sudan as an Islamic and Arab country. The Africans resist this imposition and identify largely with sub-Saharan Black Africa asserting their Black African identity. Moreover, although Black Sudanese are not monolithic, some even practicing Islam, the majority have embraced Christianity.

The Sudanese government has exploited another important tool — oil. In 1977, Oil was discovered in Southern Sudan. Much of the oil development was done surreptitiously so as to deny Black African claims. Up until recently, the fundamentalist government allied itself with a Canadian oil company, Talisman, which provided the technology and resources to successfully complete the building of a pipeline to Northern Sudan. Villages have been razed in the South and thousands of people have been displaced, so oil exploration and development can continue unimpeded. The Islamic government has used its oil revenues accrued to sustain the war against the Black Africans.

One of the most ruthless tactics is using famine as a weapon. The government army and militias have burned arable lands in the South whereby food cannot grow. Furthermore, their livestock is looted. Relief agencies are prevented from delivering food to famine areas. There is also food aid diverted to feed soldiers, mostly government troops. This has been further exacerbated by untimely droughts which has resulted in thousands of deaths.

In addition, to Black civilians being summarily executed and murdered, thousands more, primarily women and children, have been abducted and sold into slavery. The slave trade in Sudan is most prolific where slaves are forced to do demeaning tasks and suffer gut-wrenching human abuses. Nobody is aware of the number of women and children who have been enslaved to date.

With the shared legacy of suffering slavery and genocide, Blacks and Jews in Dialogue (BJD) are determined to raise consciousness, particularly among officials of the Canadian government. Canada was one of the leading countries to coalesce world opinion against South African Apartheid. It is the BJD’s objective that we can motivate Canada, once more, to take a leading role against this brutal apartheid and civil war in Sudan.

Report an Anti-Semitic/Racist Incident 1-800 892-BNAI

To contact the Blacks & Jews in Dialogue, League for Human Rights,
consult the B'nai Brith Staff Directory or
email us at bjd@bnaibrith.ca