News Article by ANA on January 21, 2000 at 15:52:37:
Women, Children Taken Away As Part Of The Booty
All Africa News Agency
January 21, 2000
Nairobi - Whether or not slavery exists in Sudan is a thorny issue that continues to generate much debate the world over. As far as Khartoum is concerned, allegations of existence of slavery are the creations of its foes hell bent on tarnishing the name of the Islamic state.
Yet more and more independent sources continue to give evidence to the contrary, reports AANA Correspondent Charles Omondi.
According to the Collins Concise Dictionary, slavery is the subjection of a person to another person, especially in being forced into work. Going by this definition, many analysts agree, the practice is rampant in Sudan especially in the context of an internecine civil war now in its 17th year.
A principle characteristic of the war that pits the predominantly Arab and Islamic north against the Christian and traditionalist south, has been sustained raids on the latter by either the government or government militias. On such occasions, thousands of captives, mostly women and children are taken away as part of the war booty.
Father Mario Riva, 72, is among the latest people to come up with evidence that slavery, a humanising phenomenon synonymous with the days of the yore, is still a reality in Africa's most expansive state. The elderly Italian clergy spent about four weeks at Nyamllel and Marial Bai last December and was able to meet and listen to accounts by some 234 former slaves.
The two places are some of the northern-most points of the territory controlled by the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army SPLA, hence there being more prone to raids. The former captives, majority of them now elderly women, recounted harrowing experiences about their capture, life in bondage and how they eventually secured their freedom.
The Catholic priest who has done most of his missionary work in Sudan, was on a mission to conduct a service of reconciliation for the former captives, soldiers and the rest of the population. He says he felt the need for his kind of initiative because those in freedom had either due to inability, unwillingness or both, failed to do much to secure the freedom for their enslaved brothers.
Some of them, he added, were even reluctant to welcome the former slaves and help them fit in a free society. Riva states emphatically that the 234 were a small fraction of this category of people now a commonplace in the SPLA/government border areas. "A lot more did not come to me because of time and/or distance or due to lack of information," he says.
Slavery as it exists in Sudan today, he observes, is essentially part of a strategy to destabilise and bring the south under the control of the north. However, the practice is a colonial legacy that has survived many generations.
It dates back to the 16th century when Arabs first conquered the Nuba of Central Sudan. Having been subjugated, the Nuba were required to supply their masters with slaves, forcing the former to turn to their Black brothers down south.
Against this background, the Arabs came to believe that Blacks in Sudan were only suitable as slaves. The practice was to be perpetuated by subsequent regimes in the region, - the Turks and the Mahadiya, reputed for establishing Sudan as a nation state as we know it today.
Whereas the government does not openly support the practice, it gives the Muraheleen (Arab militia men) a free hand to capture the southerners and their property as their (Muraheleens') pay for the raids on the enemies.
In its 1999 report on Sudan, the Human Rights Watch talked of the government's complicity in the slave raids: "The government also armed tribal militias to use as proxy fighting forces. It claimed that it did not violate the cease-fire when on January 28 last year 60 Arab Baggara militia members (Muraheleen) attacked Bararud in Bahr El Ghazal on horseback, killing 10 people and looting the medical compound and feeding centre.
"The resurgence of slavery was an outgrowth of the war and the arming of the Muraheleen, who were incorporated into the army in 1989. They were allowed to keep all cattle and people they captured as war booty while guarding the military's supply train to the south or on freelance raids," says the report.
"The government," adds the human rights watchdog report, "denied all slavery allegations until May 1999, when it acknowledged the problem of "abduction and forced labour of women and children and set up a committee to address it, including a Dinka non-governmental activist experienced in locating and retrieving Dinka children from slavery".
Last year, the Sudan Catholic Bishops' Regional Conference also talked of the existence of slavery in the African state. Their report says in part: "We also noted with regret certain practices which undermine the dignity and worth of human person".
"In particular, we deplore extrajudicial punishment, disappearance, slavery and slave-related practice, tortures restrictions on freedom of worship, lack of freedom of expression…" it added.
Once captured, the former slaves told Riva, the southerners are used as labourers on farms, others become herdsmen while some do domestic chores. Many women and young girls are taken in by Arab men as concubines.
Food, according to the accounts, is provided on strict ratios and a slightest provocation to the master could cost one a day's meal. One generally surrenders all individual liberties and in some extreme circumstances, a slave may be branded to make him/her easily recognisable should he attempt to escape, says Santino Madut,18, whose younger brother was a slave for three years.
How then do the slaves secure their freedom? Riva says Khartoum now seems to have a policy on freeing of slaves, most probably due to increasing pressure from the international community. "A lot of the people told of how they were set free after they secretly managed to report their cases to the police," he said.
Some regained their liberty through escape, a risky venture that can result in death should one be caught in the act. A good number were set free after their former masters were paid in cash, amounts of which are dependent on numerous considerations.
Asked how the last mode of emancipation differed from the contentious one used by the Swiss-based Christian Solidarity International CSI, Riva said the latter was more prone to abuse.
"For one," he observed, "all the CSI operations are brokered by local middlemen and one cannot rule out a possibility of some of them cashing in on the arrangement to make a quick buck. When it is local people paying to secure freedom for their relatives, then you can trust that the people they are paying for are genuine slaves".
CSI, which makes claims of buying freedom for thousands of slaves with dollars, has come under heavy criticism for encouraging the trade in human cargo, and for using the predicament of the Sudanese to raise funds.
The whole idea of buying human beings is hated by many and there is a realistic fear that it could be counter-productive by encouraging raiders to capture more whose freedom would then be bought with US dollars.
In a rare gesture, one slave, Malek Kuoc of Akeuic village was released due to his diligence and unwavering loyalty to his master.