by: Mr. Tony R. Perkins
War, we have all heard, is hell. But sometimes we repeat that, or hear it, without thinking about its underlying truth. We dismiss it as a truism. But it is a truism forged on the anvil of bitter human experience.
While we are willing to accept the fact that war, by its nature, is hell for the soldiers involved - that is what war entails and why it should be engaged in for only the gravest of reasons - we, and by that I mean all civilized nations, have not been willing to accept the death or suffering of innocent non-combatants; innocent people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Much less have we been willing to accept the intentional targeting, the intentional killing or brutalizing, of innocent people. That is why we have the Geneva Conventions which protect non-combatants. That is why the world was horrified by the the ethnic cleansing and the rapes committed during the recent wars in the Balkans.
Yet today, grotesque atrocities are being committed in the largest country in Africa, Sudan. They are part and parcel of a long civil war that has pitted the northern, Islamic fundamentalist regime against the people of southern Sudan and other marginalized areas. During the war, the government has armed and equipped tribal militias, thereby elevating long-simmering tribal conflicts into genocide.
Genocide is not too strong a charge to make. Genocide under agreed international law is the effort to eradicate a social, religious or racial group. In Sudan, the government-sponsored militias are trying to do just that - to eradicate the African groups in Darfur, in western Sudan.
In fact, if we would just listen, we can hear the militia condemned with the words from their own mouths. In a recent account, militia members told why they engage in the systematic rape of African women during raids on villages. They want to create "light skin babies". The attackers are ethnically Arab; the women raped are black African. They seek to destroy the African cultural and racial groups by "converting" the children of the raped African women into "Arabs." The fact that this is a bizarre ethnic fantasy does not lessen the suffering of the women who are subjected to it.
The systematic rape of non-northern, non-Arab, non-Muslim women has been going on for years in Sudan. United Nations reporters, human rights groups, religious organizations, and others had reported on the attacks on villages, in which the men and elderly are killed and the women and children are taken hostage. The children are fated to have their tendons cut and forced to watch over herds of goats. If they displease their masters, they are tortured. Some are beaten to death; some have been crucified.
The fate of the women taken hostage is equally grim. They are systematically raped. Often kept in pens like animals, they are raped repeatedly by their captors as they journey north. They are raped both to break their will and to force them to have "light skin babies". And as has been documented by both religious leaders and Members of the U.S. Congress, women and children are also branded, like animals.
What word describes such treatment of one human being by another? The only word is slavery. Those who aren't killed are enslaved and treated like animals. In fact, they are treated worse than animals - anyone who tortured animals like this would be arrested in the U.S. But these women and child hostages are taken to slave markets in the north of Sudan, and are sold. They are then "owned" by someone else.
This is the reality of Sudan. It is an ugly reality. Until recently, the victims were Christian and animist people of the south. Many observers had hoped the attacks - the murder, the brandings and the rapes - would cease as the government and southern rebels signed documents that appeared to be moving the country toward peace. But, as has happened over and over again during the last 20 years in Sudan, the government took advantage of peace in one part of the country to open a new front against the civilians of another area. It is now focusing its genocidal energy on the black Muslim people of Darfur in the west.
It is time for the world to do something about this. The actions of the Sudanese regime and its militia allies violate universally accepted norms of law - their actions violate the Geneva Conventions, the Genocide Convention, and the Anti-Slavery Conventions. During the past decade, the world has acted against other instances of ethnic cleansing, of slavery, of political rape. Why is the government of Sudan permitted, through its militia stooges, to commit such atrocities? Is it because the victims are Africans? It is time to convene war crimes tribunals to try the murderers and rapists in Sudan. The victims cry out for justice. Can you hear them?
War, we have all heard, is hell. But sometimes we repeat that, or hear it, without thinking about its underlying truth. We dismiss it as a truism. But it is a truism forged on the anvil of bitter human experience.
While we are willing to accept the fact that war, by its nature, is hell for the soldiers involved - that is what war entails and why it should be engaged in for only the gravest of reasons - we, and by that I mean all civilized nations, have not been willing to accept the death or suffering of innocent non-combatants; innocent people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Much less have we been willing to accept the intentional targeting, the intentional killing or brutalizing, of innocent people. That is why we have the Geneva Conventions which protect non-combatants. That is why the world was horrified by the the ethnic cleansing and the rapes committed during the recent wars in the Balkans.
Yet today, grotesque atrocities are being committed in the largest country in Africa, Sudan. They are part and parcel of a long civil war that has pitted the northern, Islamic fundamentalist regime against the people of southern Sudan and other marginalized areas. During the war, the government has armed and equipped tribal militias, thereby elevating long-simmering tribal conflicts into genocide.
Genocide is not too strong a charge to make. Genocide under agreed international law is the effort to eradicate a social, religious or racial group. In Sudan, the government-sponsored militias are trying to do just that - to eradicate the African groups in Darfur, in western Sudan.
In fact, if we would just listen, we can hear the militia condemned with the words from their own mouths. In a recent account, militia members told why they engage in the systematic rape of African women during raids on villages. They want to create "light skin babies". The attackers are ethnically Arab; the women raped are black African. They seek to destroy the African cultural and racial groups by "converting" the children of the raped African women into "Arabs." The fact that this is a bizarre ethnic fantasy does not lessen the suffering of the women who are subjected to it.
The systematic rape of non-northern, non-Arab, non-Muslim women has been going on for years in Sudan. United Nations reporters, human rights groups, religious organizations, and others had reported on the attacks on villages, in which the men and elderly are killed and the women and children are taken hostage. The children are fated to have their tendons cut and forced to watch over herds of goats. If they displease their masters, they are tortured. Some are beaten to death; some have been crucified.
The fate of the women taken hostage is equally grim. They are systematically raped. Often kept in pens like animals, they are raped repeatedly by their captors as they journey north. They are raped both to break their will and to force them to have "light skin babies". And as has been documented by both religious leaders and Members of the U.S. Congress, women and children are also branded, like animals.
What word describes such treatment of one human being by another? The only word is slavery. Those who aren't killed are enslaved and treated like animals. In fact, they are treated worse than animals - anyone who tortured animals like this would be arrested in the U.S. But these women and child hostages are taken to slave markets in the north of Sudan, and are sold. They are then "owned" by someone else.
This is the reality of Sudan. It is an ugly reality. Until recently, the victims were Christian and animist people of the south. Many observers had hoped the attacks - the murder, the brandings and the rapes - would cease as the government and southern rebels signed documents that appeared to be moving the country toward peace. But, as has happened over and over again during the last 20 years in Sudan, the government took advantage of peace in one part of the country to open a new front against the civilians of another area. It is now focusing its genocidal energy on the black Muslim people of Darfur in the west.
It is time for the world to do something about this. The actions of the Sudanese regime and its militia allies violate universally accepted norms of law - their actions violate the Geneva Conventions, the Genocide Convention, and the Anti-Slavery Conventions. During the past decade, the world has acted against other instances of ethnic cleansing, of slavery, of political rape. Why is the government of Sudan permitted, through its militia stooges, to commit such atrocities? Is it because the victims are Africans? It is time to convene war crimes tribunals to try the murderers and rapists in Sudan. The victims cry out for justice. Can you hear them?
