SUDAN-POLITICS: Messengers of Death from the Sky

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Jul 11 1996 (IPS) - Cluster bombs are explosives that spray grenade-like pellets on impact. They are meant not to destroy installations but to kill humans. They are also banned by international conventions governing warfare.

Cluster bombs are being used against men, women and children in southern Sudan, according to a Christian non-governmental organisation (NGO), and sources in the area.

Sudan’s Islamic fundamentalist government is using “cluster bombs to inflict death and lasting terror on civilians” in the south of the country, Gunnan Wiebalck of the Christian Solidarity International (CSI), told a press conference here on Wednesday.

On Jun. 17, twelve bombs, at least half of them cluster bombs, were dropped on Chukudum, a village of about 5,500 people 275 kms east of Juba, the main town in southern Sudan, according to Wiebalck, who recently returned here from the area. “Fortunately enough, no one was killed. Thank God.”

Wiebalck presented journalists with a statement containing testimonies by people who said they were in Chukudum when the Sudan armed forces plane bombed it, including Catholic priest Fr Maurice Loguti.

“Within one minute we were running like chickens or a rat chased by a cat,” Loguti said. It was “the 17th time Sudan’s government bombed our village since August 1993. Many of our people don’t dare live in the village any more and have fled to the mountains.”

More than one million people have died in southern Sudan since the SPLA launched its bush war 13 years ago to demand for greater autonomy for the non-Muslim population of the region — home to 35 percent of the 27 million Sudanese — from the Muslim-dominated north.

Chukudum is located in an area controlled by the rebels.

Wiebalck, a Swiss missionary, said the bombs fell next to the local primary school, the Roman Catholic Church and a hospital run by the Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) organisation.

“One of the cluster bombs came down only 500 metres away from my school where 475 children were present,” the head of the primary school, Joseph Ahileng, was quoted as saying in the CSI statement.

Another source, the local NPA representative was reported as saying that the village’s hospital had been the main target.

“We had no time to evacuate any of our freshly operated cases. The hospital was missed by a mere 300 metres. But the worst thing is that the people here are now very frightened. They have stopped cultivating the fields on which bombs fell,” ran the NPA representative’s testimony.

Wiebalck said people in the village feared that many children would be killed by the hundreds of unexploded mini-grenades which the cluster bombs released in Chukudum.

The local commander of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), Kuol Deim Kuol, suspected that the government army dropped the bombs to disrupt a peace conference that brought together all the area’s tribal chiefs.

“There is a lot of cattle rustling in the area and so the elders and chiefs came together to resolve the issue,” he was quoted as saying. “The government of Sudan deliberately targeted this meeting.”

According to Wiebalck, the CSI’s Patron, Baroness Cox — a member of the British House of Lords — has taken up the matter with the Sudanese authorities.

However, Ali Sadiq of the Sudan Embassy here denied at the press conference that his government had bombed Chukudum. “I want to make it categorically clear that Sudan does not possess cluster bombs,” he said, although Wiebalck showed slides containing evidence of the bombing and distributed pictures to journalists.

Sadiq responded to the charges with counter-accusations of his own: CSI was using its NGO status as a cover for ferrying arms to the rebels in southern Sudan and “as for Baroness Cox, she is a well known anti-Sudanese government campaigner who visited Sudan illegally twice last year, without obtaining a visa”.

“As a member of the British House of Lords, we expected her to understand regulations governing a visit to a foreign country,” he said.

Pagan Amum, SPLA representative here, had a different perspective on the issue. He said Baroness Cox obtained a ‘visa’ from the SPLA to travel to the rebel-controlled area.

“People must understand that Sudan has dual power. One under the Khartoum regime and the other under the SPLA. So if (President) Omar Bashir wants to visit Yambio he must get a visa from the SPLA,” he said.

Amum said the SPLA had recorded 13 cases of cluster bombings by the government forces against villages in southern Sudan between Jun. 13 and Jul. 13.

Wiebalck said he suspected that Khartoum had obtained the bombs either from Russia or Iraq. “We still don’t know. We are waiting for experts’ analysis,” he said. “What we are worried about most is Khartoum’s decision to bring war into peaceful villages. We think the government wants to strike terror into the hearts of the community.”

Sadiq disagreed. “Chukudum is a well known SPLA garrison,” he said. “There are no civilians there.”