R: Sudan Monthly Report - March 2001

["Gerardo" <orsifam@dada.it>]

Complimenti per il lavoro, ma non sono in grado di utilizzarlo per le
attivita' che riesco a fare.
Prego pertanto di cancellarmi dalla lista di distribuzione.
Buon proseguimento ed auguri.

----- Original Message -----
From: Enrico Marcandalli <ramalkandy@iol.it>
To: <pck-africa@peacelink.it>
Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2001 5:23 PM
Subject: Sudan Monthly Report - March 2001


>
>
> Sudan Monthly Report
>
> A monthly production by the Sudan Catholic Information Office
> (SCIO)<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns =
> "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
>
>
>
> March 15, 2001
>
>
>
> Content
>
> 1. Chronology
>
> 2. Shepherd s desperate cry for starving flock
>
> 3. Stay Committed in Sudan
>
>
> 1. Chronology
>
> February 16:  With 10,000 signatures and a dusty 250-kilometre
> (155-mile) trek behind them, two young Swedes hope to teach the world
> how the people of southern Sudan are crying out for peace after 17
> years of war. In the latest stage of an awareness-raising campaign,
> Adreas Zetterlund, 25, and Tommy Larsson, 29, both lay evangelical
> preachers, walked from Rumbek to Kotobe, in southern Sudan's
> Bahr-el-Ghazal province from January 29 to February 10
>
> 17: The Sudanese minister of livestock minister Abdullah Muhammad Sayed
> Ahmad has announced the consent of both Syria and Lebanon to import the
> Sudanese meat after they leant about the assurances on health and
> quarantine measures pursued in Sudan. In a statement to the Sudanese
> daily al-Anbaa the Sudanese minister added that his ministry is seeking
> in its 2001 plan to open new markets also in the countries of West Africa.
>
> 17: The Sudanese daily al-Anbaa unveiled that the forces of the
> rebellion Mushar had killed Veter Kouj, the former governor of the
> Sudanese Mayout provinces who was kidnapped by the Southern Sudanese
> rebellion movement in 2000. Well-informed sources said the paper added
> that the killing of governor Kouj came as a result of his rejection to
> co-operate with Mushar forces and the forces of the SPLA.
>
> 18:  Sudan has released two leading human rights lawyers detained for
> criticising the arrest of opposition figures, their families said.
> Ghazi Suleiman and Ali Mahmoud Hassanein were released, 72 days after
> their December arrest for speaking out against the arrest of seven
> opposition politicians detained during a meeting with US political
> officer Glenn Warren. Warren was expelled, but the seven are to stand
> trial on charges of spying and undermining the constitution.
>
> 18:  Sudan's foreign minister said Khartoum hopes better ties with its
> neighbours and increased aid to the south will deprive rebels of
> cross-border bases and speed the end of the 18-year-old civil war. "The
> more relations with neighbouring countries improve, the more this
> positively reflects on their relationship to the southern issue,"
> Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters.
>
> 19: Some 680 Sudanese refugees have arrived in the northwestern Ugandan
> district of Yumbe and  been transported to the Imvepi Refugee
> Settlement, said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
> (UNHCR). The process of registration is still in progress and the total
> number of recognised refugees will be available only at the completion
> of the process, said the document.
>
> 21: Leading Islamist leader and former speaker of the Sudanese
> parliament, Hassan al-Turabi, has been arrested. Armed men picked him
> up at his Khartoum home, party officials said. There has been no
> official confirmation of the incident yet, but the arrest follows an
> understanding struck by his party and the main southern rebel group.
>
> 23:  The United Nations has warned that starvation threatens over half
> a million people in Sudan. According to a statement from the UN Office
> for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 600,000 Sudanese are
> threatened with starvation in the extremely drought- and
> conflict-affected country. The total number of people in need of some
> food assistance is three million.
>
> 23:  The United States should organize a peace initiative for Sudan
> because efforts by the African nation's neighbours to end an
> 18-year-old war there ``hold no promise,'' says a report compiled with
> State Department and UN participation. The time has come for the United
> States, in league with others, to make a strong push to end Sudan's
> war,'' said the report by the Centre for Strategic and International
> Studies.
>
> 24: Warning of an "impending catastrophe" in Sudan, where 600,000
> people are at
> immediate risk of starvation, the United Nations Emergency
> Relief  Coordinator has expressed deep concern about the "very poor
> response" of donors to the country's deteriorating humanitarian
> situation. Kenzo Oshima noted that in addition to the pressing survival
> needs of several million displaced and vulnerable people affected by
> war and conflict, widespread drought was now threatening hundreds of
> thousands of others.
>
> 24:  The editor and publisher of an independent Sudanese newspaper were
> arrested and held by police at their office for seven hours before
> being released on bail, the paper's managing editor said. Albino Okeny,
> editor-in-chief of the daily Khartoum Monitor, and publisher Alfred
> Taban, ``were arrested because of an article published in the paper on
> December 5 by Taban,'' said managing editor Nhial Bol. It was not clear
> what charges the two faced.
>
> 23: More than 7,000 people have fled fighting near southern Sudan's oil
> fields in the past 14 months, bringing the total to 36,500, a UN
> official said. "The oil-rich area of Sudan has seen a great deal of
> population displacement and in fact is currently one of the most
> insecure areas in Sudan," Nicholas Siwingwa, deputy country director of
> the World Food Programme (WFP), said in a statement.
>
> 24: Media reports of the arrest of Hassan al-Turabi, considered by many
> the world's leading Islamic militant, failed to mention Turabi's ties
> to Osama Bin Laden or the whole vast, sinister world of Islamic
> terrorism. Yet if the Islamic terrorist movement can be said to have a
> single mastermind, a single centralising and directing intelligence, it
> would belong to al-Turabi. The "real signal of change" took place late
> last year when Bashir suddenly made lightning raids and arrested
> opposition leaders, not close to Turabi, on charges that they had been
> conducting secret talks with "a foreign power," the United States.
> Bashir forced the US diplomatic representative in
> Khartoum to withdraw.
>
> 24: President Bashir has reshuffled key cabinet ministers while
> continuing to crack down on an opposition group run by a former  aide.
> The president, who was re-elected in December for a second, and last,
> five-year term, dismissed finance minister Mohammed Khari al-Zubeir and
> replaced him with Abdel Rahim Hamdi, a former finance minister, in a
> decree published by the government-owned al-Anbaa newspaper.
>
> 26: The Sudanese army and Muslim scholars came out in support of
> president Bashir s crackdown on a jailed Islamic theologian and former
> parliament speaker whose group signed an agreement with the SPLA.
> Senior army officers called on Bashir to deal firmly with Turabi, his
> former ally, who was arrested after his Popular Congress Party signed a
> memorandum of understanding with the SPLA to jointly force the
> government into stepping down.
>
> 26:  Turabi is being held in solitary confinement in a rat-infested
> prison cell with no access to newspapers or writing material, his wife
> has said. Wisal al-Mehdi told Saudi Arabia's al-Watan newspaper that
> her husband was being held in a prison cell "full of rats" and that he
> was in solitary confinement with no access to "newspapers, magazines,
> papers and pens".
>
> 27:  Sudan's president has called former ally Turabi a liar and
> criticised his agreement with a rebel group in his first comments about
> the Islamic thinker since his arrest. ``Don't let him lie to you,''
> President Bashir told a unit of the Popular Defence Forces, a
> pro-government militia, before they headed to the front line in Sudan's
> 18-year-old civil war, which pits the government and the Muslim north
> against the rebels in the mostly Christian and traditionalist south.
>
> 28: the UN Children s Fund (UNICEF) has airlifted More than 2,500
> former child soldiers from volatile areas of southern Sudan to
> rehabilitation centres in a unique operation, the agency said. The
> boys, who have been demobilised from the SPLA in the southwestern Bahr
> el-Ghazal region, had gathered near airstrips to board transport planes
> operated by the UN World Food Programme.
>
> 28: The US state department found human rights gains in Nigeria and
> Ghana last year amid a number of rights setback in Africa including
> Sudan where  the government s record was rated as extremely poor . In
> its annual report on rights conditions worldwide, the state department
> said the Sudanese government continued to commit numerous serious  abuses
.
>
> March 1: Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has underscored the need
> for strong
> economic ties with Sudan, arguing that this would enhance bilateral
> cooperation between the two neighbours. Meles, the Ethiopian News
> Agency reported, launched his appeal while receiving a 25-strong
> Sudanese business delegation at in Addis Ababa. He said economic ties
> between the two countries had gained momentum since the recent signing
> of trade agreements that led improved road and rail links between the
> Ethiopia and Sudan.
>
> 1: Visiting Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid has denied that his
> country was in turmoil, saying trouble was localised, a Sudanese daily
> reported. "I cannot deny that there are problems in parts of the
> country, but it is a large country and problems in one part do not mean
> that the whole of Indonesia is in turmoil," the independent al-Ayam
> newspaper quoted him as telling a joint news conference with president
> Bashir.
>
> 2: Sudan has criticised the Unicef for secretly airlifting from civil
> war frontlines more than 2,800 child soldiers who had been serving with
> SPLA, a newspaper said. Announcing the evacuation, Unicef said SPLA had
> handed over the children, aged eight to 18, and Unicef would now try to
> trace  their families.
>
> 3:  The factional fighting in southern Sudan could widen into a
> devastating famine unless the US intervenes diplomatically with rebel
> forces and others, Human Rights Watch said. In a March 1 letter to US
> Secretary of State Colin Powell, Human Rights Watch called on the Bush
> administration to use its influence with the southern factions to stave
> off the potential crisis.
>
> 4:  President Bashir has stressed, before his departure of the Libyan
> Sirte town after participation in the extraordinarily African summit,
> that the African union has become a reality. He said, in a press
> statement that the number of the member states in the proposed union
> has increased to 36 countries.
>
> 5: Talisman Energy Inc. had been considering selling its oil operations
> in Sudan amid controversy pressuring its stock price, but signals from
> the new US administration about possibly loosening sanctions has given
> it reason to hang on, Talisman's chief executive said. Talisman CEO Jim
> Buckee, speaking after a presentation to an energy conference in New
> York, did not dispute recent speculation that a few select rival oil
> companies had taken a look at its stake in the Sudan project's
> operating consortium.
>
> 6: Sudan s minister of energy and mining Dr Awad Ahmad al-Jaz has
> described the decision of Talisman to continue its oil investment in
> Sudan as evidence on prevalence of security and appropriate investment
> climate in the country. He said in press statements that Sudan is open
> for whoever desires to invest in it, and that it is secured for whoever
> wants to stay or work in it, pointing out that Sudan is rich of
> unlimited resources.
>
> 10: The US government is turning a spotlight on one of the world s most
> sorrowful conflicts-the grinding 18-year-old war in Sudan. Secretary of
> State Colin Powell has met with senior State Department officials to
> talk about crafting a US policy for ending a war long accompanied by
> starvation, disease the taking of slaves and human rights abuses by
> both sides.
>
> 12: The new man appointed by the United Nations to investigate human
> rights in
> Sudan, Gerhart Baum, has begun his first mission in the country. Mr.
> Baum met the prominent human rights activist, Ghazi Suleiman, of the
> Sudanese Group for Human Rights. Mr. Baum replaces Leonardo Franco, who
> resigned after submitting a report last year to the UN detailing
> allegations of gross human rights violations in the country.
>
> 12: Dozens of gunmen looted and attacked an aid agency compound in
> southern Sudan, kidnapping four aid workers and killing two people, an
> official said. Two Kenyans and two Sudanese, working for the US-based
> Adventist Development and Relief Agency, were taken hostage after the
> attack, said Nick Trent, programme director for ADRA's southern Sudan
> operations. A woman and 12-year-old girl were killed.
>
> 13:  The wife of detained Sudanese Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi
> said in remarks published that she planned to discuss her husband's
> plight with the U.N. special human rights envoy in Sudan. Turabi was
> arrested along with close aides in February for signing a controversial
> agreement with the main rebel group in Sudan's 18-year-old civil war.
>
> 15: "There is perhaps no greater tragedy on the face of the Earth today
> than the tragedy that is unfolding in the Sudan," Secretary of State
> Colin Powell told the House International Relations Committee. Powell
> was referring to the campaign of genocide the Sudanese government is
> conducting on its ethnic and Christian minorities, and dismissed that
> Sudan would be a priority under the Bush administration.  The
> Washington Post highlighted the tragedy in Sudan, urging the new
> administration to take action before the situation worsens.
>
> 15: The Sudanese and Russian governments have concluded a deal,
> estimated to be worth more than $600m, which will see Sudan
> manufacturing Russian battle tanks in exchange for oil concessions for
> Russia. It is understood that Sudan will pay the Russians for the
> rights to assemble TU-72 tanks and that the Russians have undertaken to
> invest all the proceeds in oil exploration and development. Russian oil
> companies have already been given the green light to prospect in
> Eastern Sudan.
>
> 2. Shepherd s desperate cry for starving flock
>
> The Catholic Bishop of Diocese of Rumbek (DOR), southern Sudan, Caesar
> Mazzolari, has appealed for urgent intervention to save an estimated 1
> million Sudanese from starving to death.
>
>
>
> Reporting from Malwalkon, northern Bhar el Ghazal, on March 2, 2001,
> Bishop Mazzolari said: One million people in a sash of Sudan 200 km
> deep (north to south) and 300 km wide from Mayen Abun to Nyamlell (east
> to west) are in the irrevocable grip of hunger and thirst that quickly
> deteriorates and will soon claim the lives of hundreds as the days pass.
>
>
>
> He said that clashes between the Murahiliins (Khartoum-sponsored Arab
> militias) and the SPLA had displaced thousands of people who lost all
> their possessions in the process.  Their homes, food and property were
> burned in the military attacks, the Murahiliins raided their cattle and
> they now live far from any source of water, in utter poverty and
> isolation.
>
>
>
> Further, said the Comboni clergy, the massive military confrontation
> around the area north west of Malwalkon early last month caused the
> death of many Murahiliins plus their horses and several SPLA
> combatants. The corpses of both soldiers and horses are still being
> buried hurriedly in shallow graves and with the coming of the rainy
> season, these corpses will become exposed causing serious contamination
> and the spread of epidemics.
>
>
>
> In the face of the worsening humanitarian situation, said the Bishop,
> international intervention, has remained minimal. I travelled in the
> vast area around Malwalkon and saw only one NGO camp (MSF-France) in
> Adwemko with a distribution centre, a small feeding point set up and a
> buffalo cargo plane off-loading some food items, he said.
>
>
>
> World Food Progamme, he added, has been dropping food in Malwalkon and
> near the camp of Akwemko. Much of the food is entrusted to Sudan Relief
> and Rehabilitation Association (SRRA) for distribution. SRRA is SPLA s
> humanitarian wing
>
>
>
>    Otherwise people are camped in deserted areas in small pyramidal
> grass structures, one and a half metre tall and one metre in diameter,
> crowded with mothers and children.
>
>
>
> In addition to food and water, the Bishop said, the displaced people
> desperately need blankets and mosquito nets to protect themselves
> against mosquitoes as the long rains are expected in a month s time.
>
>
>
> The Diocese of Rumbek has in the meantime dispatched a team of priests
> and one Brother of the Apostles of Jesus to Malwalkon. They are
> assessing the needs and observing the most vulnerable and marginalised.
>
>
>
> DOR, Bishop Mazzolari said, is willing to complement efforts of any
> organisations that are willing to intervene in the Sudan situation. The
> Diocese is making arrangements for the erection of semi-permanent
> structures and stores (pre-fab.), and for the completion of the
> Hospital premises in Malwalkon-Gordhim.
>
>
>
> The SPLA has also sent a similar appeal. A statement issued in Nairobi
> by the SPLA s official spokesman, Dr Samson Kwaje, put the affected
> population at 2.36 million people. Dr Kwaje urged the international
> community to act promptly to avert a catastrophe of 1998 proportion.
> In  1998, at least 200,000 Sudanese perished in a famine caused by war
> and drought.
>
>
>
>
> 3. Stay Committed in Sudan
>
> None of the civil conflicts that continue to rage around the world has
> exacted as high a human toll as the cruel war in southern Sudan, where
> more than 2 million people have died and 4 million have been displaced.
>
>
> Former president Bill Clinton, in whose administration I served, said
> on Human Rights Observance Day, December 6 2000, that America must
> speak out when the most basic human rights are under threat, and cited
> among other offences "the scourge of slavery in Sudan." When the
> Sudanese foreign minister then challenged me to travel to southern
> Sudan and see for myself that there was no slavery, I couldn't refuse.
>
>
> It was a challenge he shouldn't have made: My trip confirmed for me
> that the slave trade flourishes in southern Sudan and remains an
> intolerable blight on the world's conscience.
>
> Our delegation boarded two light UN Cessna airplanes in northern Kenya
> and flew into the remote towns of Marial Bai, Rumbek and Lui in
> southern Sudan, which have been targeted by either militias or
> high-altitude bombers of the government in Khartoum.
>
>
> In Marial Bai, we were outraged to see and hear firsthand testimonials
> of women and children who had been captured, enslaved, beaten, tortured
> and raped by the PDF -- Popular Defence Forces --operating at the
> behest and with the support of the Sudanese government.
>
> In Lui, we met with civilians victimised by the Sudanese government's
> aerial bombardments, people who had barely survived their wounds but
> were brave enough to tell their stories. We saw the craters and the
> shrapnel from these bombings.
>
>
> We visited the US nongovernmental organisation -- Samaritan's Purse
> hospital -- whose courageous staff is doing a remarkable job providing
> desperately needed medical care to thousands of people. We saw how the
> hospital workers and patients lived in fear of the next bombing.
>
> I was especially outraged to learn that even as we arrived in Lui,
> these bombings were continuing. Just down the winding dirt road only 20
> miles from us, four people had been killed the day before in a vicious
> bombing. Later we saw a child, 3 or 4 years old, whose and arm had been
> destroyed by one of the bombs. His mother had died on the way to the
> hospital. The same day, in Yei, which is only 50 miles away, an even
> more despicable bombing attack took place in a market, killing 19
> civilians and wounding scores more.
>
>
> The government of Sudan must stop these heinous, senseless bombings of
> civilian targets. There is no excuse for them, and no reason, except to
> terrify innocent civilians. The government must also stop the
> outrageous practice of slavery by cutting off support for the PDF and
> prosecuting those responsible for these actions. Our European allies
> also have an obligation to press Sudan to end this practice. I call on
> them to join us.
>
>
> The Sudanese government has said on many occasions that it is changing
> its behaviour, reforming its policies and improving its human rights
> record. But I'm afraid I saw precious little evidence of that claim
> during my visit.
>
>
> This is not to say that the forces of the Southern People's Liberation
> Army in the South are devoid of any responsibility for human rights
> violations; they are not. But the preponderance of evidence, not only
> from my trip but also from the UN and major human rights organisations,
> places most of the blame squarely on the Khartoum regime.
>
>
> US policy on Sudan has been consistent, principled and clear: a
> commitment to help achieve a just and lasting peace and a resolve to
> keep international pressure on the regime to change its abusive
> behaviour. The United States has maintained comprehensive economic
> sanctions on Sudan and, of course, limited UN Security Council
> sanctions remain. We also joined with more than 100 other countries to
> express our opposition to Sudan's holding a seat on the Security Council.
>
>
> The United States remains the largest humanitarian donor to the people
> of Sudan, having contributed more than a $1 billion in the past 10
> years. Its commitment to the people of Sudan -- of all of Sudan --
> needs to remain strong and enduring.
>
>
> Sudan is not a partisan issue in the US. There is broad, deep support
> for seeing the abuses there stopped and the war ended on a just basis.
> The new administration should maintain this commitment.- (Article by
> Susan Rice, former US assistant secretary of state for African affairs,
> was first published in the Washington Post)
>
>
>
> For inquiries, contact
>
> The editor
>
> Charles Omondi
>
> Sudan Catholic Information Office (SCIO)
>
> <mailto:SCIO@maf.or.ke>SCIO@maf.or.ke
>
> Tel. 254-2-577949/ 577616/ 577595
>
> Fax 254-2-577327
>
>