Darfur, the world’s ‘worst humanitarian crisis’ has been in the media for weeks. Every day seems to bring new twists to the narratives of despair, violence and inhumanity.
While it appears now to be a recent issue, those who watch events in Sudan know that it has been a minefield of civil war, persecution and violence since the 1950s, with one brief break of about nine years. It is perhaps the world’s longest and most intractable civil war.
Each outbreak of warfare entails hostilities between the north, populated by a largely Arabian ethnic population who are mainly Muslim, and the southern part of the country that is on the whole populated by people of African ethnicity who are either Christian or animist.
Over decades the country, especially in the South, has seen multitudes of refugees fleeing the wrath of the northern government militias who have burned their villages, murdered their men, raped their women and taken many children and youths into slavery.
Many refugees have lived for years in makeshift camps knowing they can never return to their villages. The one agreeable side to it for us – if you can ever believe people having to flee their homes can be called agreeable – is that when the UN has assisted Sudanese refugees to settle in other countries, many have come here to Australia.
Our major metropolitan cities and dioceses, including Sydney, now have growing, lively Sudanese ministries and congregations who are largely pastored by their own compatriots. Their witness is compelling to any who listens to their stories.
Southern Cross has carried a number of reports over some years about the Sudanese situation. In August 2000 it ran a lengthy report from Nine Network veteran reporter Hugh Riminton who talked then of three million Sudanese displaced by war.
He wrote “Reec Mater died in an emergency feeding camp in southern Sudan. He was three. He lay in his mother’s lap too weak to feed. His head lolled back from her breast. His last instinctive suckings had finished a little time before. He was as fragile as his breath and then was gone. Around him, other children were making the same journey”.
In 2002 Southern Cross carried reports of an NCCA delegation led by Archbishop Ian George that went to refugee camps in southern Sudan.
They came back full of stories shared with them about the appalling hostilities Sudanese refugees had experienced. Church newspapers carried this material, but it was overwhelming and needed to be shared with mainstream media. A media conference was arranged and only church media arrived. Two reporters, one from The Sydney Morning Herald, and another from The Australian sought permission from their editors to attend and write it up. Both were told, “There is no interest in that part of the world here.”
In Southern Cross we asked “Why is it that media interests, and consequent community discussion, always follow our own government’s political interests or the filming and business priorities of CNN, the BBC and Reuters?”
We knew that the NCCA delegates were told that in southern Sudan as many people were being killed by Islamic jihad forces each week as were killed in the destruction of the New York World Trade Centre Towers in toto. They were asked “Why isn’t the western world as interested in us?”
Darfur fills our pages now, and the Sudanese government has been given a few weeks to disarm and dismantle the Arab Janjaweed militias who have been engaged in destructive killing on a massive scale, else the government will face international sanctions. Genocide and ethnic cleansing must be the most appropriate words to use about their campaign of looting and burning whole villages.
The UK Guardian gave this as a part explanation of the causes of this conflict: “The fighting in Darfur began with the ceasefire deal to split oil revenues and land between the northern and southern Sudanese. Rebels in Darfur, in the west, demanded a fairer deal for the region’s black African population, taking up arms against government forces and installations in early 2003. Khartoum responded by arming the Arab Janjaweed militias who have swiftly gained the upper hand.”
It’s oil, land and power they are fighting over. But small children are still dying, villages are being burnt, women are being raped, villagers are being murdered. Hugh Riminton’s story can be repeated endlessly.
Iraq has made the global community nervous of contemplating international intervention. In this case economic action through internationally agreed sanctions aimed at the Khartoum government must be brought into effect.
Let’s pray the world doesn’t again find itself wringing its hands and saying ‘Never again’ just as it did in relation to Rwanda and Cambodia.