RIGHTS: U.S. Team Arrives in Sudan to Probe Claims of Slavery

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Katy Salmon

NAIROBI, Apr 9 2002 (IPS) - A United States-led team arrived in Sudan Tuesday to investigate allegations of slavery as part of a renewed U.S. effort to help end Sudan’s 19 year old war.

The team is made up of international experts, all with extensive experience working in Sudan. Penn Kemble, a former director of the U.S. Information Agency, is leading the team.

The initiative is one of four proposals made by U.S. envoy former Senator John Danforth late last year.

The group will initially spend 10 days in Sudan visiting both the south – where the raids take place – and the north – which is the final destination for most abductees.

A technical team will stay behind for another six weeks to follow up investigations before the full group returns to Sudan in mid-May to wrap up the report.

Sudan’s government has welcomed the international team.

Mohamed Dirdeiry, a senior official at the Sudanese Embassy in Nairobi, says their investigations will finally prove to the world that slavery does not exist in his country.

“From our side of the government we are quite sure there is no slavery per se in Sudan and we are welcoming the international community to investigate for itself.

“The efforts, which were made by most international non-governmental organisations towards redeeming some of the slaves, have been proved to be completely elusive.

“A lot of what they were doing in the past has been found to be done only because they had fallen victims for some ploys deployed by the SPLA or others,” Dirdeiry says.

The SPLA is the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, the main southern rebel group. It has been fighting for greater independence from the government since 1983.

Dirdeiry prefers to describe the problem as one of abduction rooted in historical ethnic animosities.

“There is abduction right now taking place between the tribes in the war zone and that problem has been worsened because of the war situation.

“Yes, we admit that some of the children and women abducted are used for working in houses or farms.

He says the government opposes these abductions.

“Is the Sudanese law condoning this practice? Is the Sudanese law protecting those people who are perpetrating this practice?

“No. The Sudanese law is very clear. We don’t want to see anyone working for nothing for anybody. This practice is totally alien to Sudanese law.

“But when those abductions are taking place far away from the government’s reach, of course the government cannot be held responsible for what is happening there,” he defends.

The government has even set up a Committee for the Eradication of Abductions of Women and Children which has the right to put people on trial who are suspected of involvement in the illegal act.

The United Nations Rapporteurs for Human Rights in Sudan, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch do not believe Dirdeiry’s denials.

While slave raiding is an age-old practice between Sudan’s cattle herding Baggara and Dinka ethnic groups, it gained fresh impetus with the renewal of the civil war in 1983.

Rights groups charge that this is the result of a deliberate, organised government campaign to depopulate and destroy swathes of the south by providing the Baggara with guns and horses and encouraging them to raid Dinka villages. This is an effective weapon of war as Dinkas make up the core of SPLA support.

“The objective is threefold: capturing valuable farm and grazing land for Arab communities expanding south; destroying the popular base of the SPLA and creating a larger buffer zone between north and south; and decimating the socio-economic fabric of Dinka communities.

“By condoning and underwriting such conduct, the government has created rich financial incentives for raiders, militias and slave traders to plunder southern communities, from looting livestock to exploiting slave labour on commercial farms,” says the International Crisis Group in ‘God, Oil and Country: Changing the Logic of War in Sudan’.

Dirdeiry denies the claims by the Group, a Brussels-based think-tank. He says the government was forced to arm the Baggara because they were being attacked by the SPLA.

“The government, because it cannot protect them by deploying any military forces there, gave them weapons in order to protect themselves. They are entitled to protect themselves and they are entitled to at least having some weapons or sort of assistance from the central government.

“Maybe some of them had misused whatever assistance they had received from the government but it was not given to them at all in order to enslave anybody,” he says.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says it hopes that the slavery-investigation team will produce a balanced, accurate report as this could put pressure on Sudan’s government to tackle the problem more seriously.

“Any thorough investigation of this nature by reputable figures could play a big role in getting the facts on the table,” says Thomas Ekvall, UNICEF’s Sudan representative.

There is confusion over how many southern Sudanese have been enslaved. Estimates range from government figures of 5,000 people to Christian Solidarity International’s (CSI) suggestion of 200,000.

CSI says it has freed more than 60,000 people by buying them from the slave-owners for about 33 U.S. dollars each – a policy which has been heavily criticised for fuelling abductions.