News Article by REUTERS posted on January 10, 2001 at 11:17:13: EST (-5 GMT)
Sudan raiders abduct 122 women and children in south
By Alistair Lyon
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Pro-government militiamen
raided villages in
southern Sudan this month, killing 11 people,
wounding two and seizing 122
women and children in the first
such mass abductions reported for about a
year, U.N. officials
in Khartoum said Wednesday.
They said the attacks occurred in early January in the
Mariel Bai area in
Bahr al-Ghazal state, some 950 km (590 miles)
southwest of Khartoum, and were
the work of the Popular Defense
Forces militia, raised by the Islamist
government to help fight
the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).
The Arab raiders of the Baggara tribe, known as muraheleen,
also stole
5,075 head of cattle from Dinka tribesmen in the
villages of Acuro, Ajok,
Wunkir, Nyinameeth and Nyinaccor, they
said.
Seven of those killed were women. Eleven women were among
those abducted.
The rest were children.
The U.N. officials said they had reported the incident to
the government
in Khartoum, which has previously vowed to combat
the practice of abductions
in the south, devastated by a
17-year-old civil war. The SPLA is fighting for
autonomy and
secular rule for the black African, non-Muslim south.
Government officials were not immediately available for
comment.
FORMER CAPTIVES STRANDED
Thomas Ekvall, representative of the U.N. Children's Fund
(UNICEF) in Khartoum, told Reuters some progress had been made
in tackling
the longstanding abduction problem, but no kidnapped
children had been
reunited with their families for about six
months.
"There has been no permission to fly kids from
government-controlled areas
to SPLA-controlled areas since an
SPLA offensive in Bahr al-Ghazal in June,"
he said.
Ekvall said about 60 children had been released by their
captors and were
waiting in transit centres.
"The numbers are not that high at the moment, but that's
because there is
no point in retrieving them if we can't send
them back and we have no
resources for keeping them," he said.
The United Nations says thousands of children and women have
been abducted
into captivity and forced labor in Sudan, with
victims subject to frequent
physical and sexual abuse.
It says several thousand are believed to remain in captivity
in northern
Sudan.
The government has established a Committee for the
Eradication of
Abduction of Women and Children, which the United
Nations says has secured
the safe return of more than 300 women
and children so far, with UNICEF
support.
U.S. officials and some human rights advocates have accused
the government
of condoning slave raids.
Khartoum rejects the charge and denounces the activities of
groups such as
Swiss-based Christian Solidarity International,
which says it has bought back
thousands of black African
"slaves" from their Arab captors with cash
payments.
The United Nations does not endorse the practice of
"redeeming" captives,
which the Sudanese government says lends
itself to abuse and fraud by the
SPLA.
The army has used muraheleen horsemen to protect a railway
line that
supplies the government-held garrison town of Wau, the
capital of Bahr
al-Ghazal, from rebel attack.