SUDANESE BISHOPS CALL FOR AMERICAN HELP

KHARTOUM, Apr. 9, 01– As a delegation of bishops from the United States
visited Sudan on a fact-finding mission, the bishops of that African country
issued a statement urging American help to ease the ravages of the civil war
in Sudan.

Specifically, the Sudanese bishops asked their American counterparts to call
for the imposition of a “no-fly zone” in Sudan, saying that would be the only
effective way to stop government bombing raids on civilian targets. The
Sudanese bishops also called for economic sanctions on the Khartoum
government, in the form of restraints on sales of oil. And the bishops
renewed their plea for American help in bringing an end to abuses of
religious freedom and the practice of slavery.

The Sudanese bishopsí statement, signed by Bishop Macram Max Gassis of El
Obeid, concluded with a note that the damage of civil war in Sudan have not
been confined to the south of the country, but reach the Nuba Mountains and
the Blue Nile region as well.

The following is the full text of the Sudanese bishops’ appeal:

The current 18-year-old civil war waged between forces loyal to the
government of Sudan (GOS) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA)
has resulted in the suffering, deprivation and death of millions in Sudan. The
recent escalation of the conflict by the Khartoum regime threatens even
greater destruction of lives, property, and whole cultures. The Catholic
Church in Sudan, working for an end to the war, and a just resolution of the
root causes of the conflict, urges the Catholic Church in the United States to
join with us in the pursuit of the following policy objectives:

1. STOP AERIAL BOMBARDMENT OF CIVILIANS. The first policy objective of
the USCC must be to work for an end to the aerial bombardment of civilian
populations in the Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile and southern Sudan
by the GOS.

The Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Conference, and the Sudan Catholic Bishops’
Regional Conference, and the AMECEA (bishops’ conferences of East Africa),
have long urged that the only effective means of accomplishing this
objective, to protect civilian populations and civilian institutions– schools,
churches, medical clinics, feeding centers, open-air markets, landing strips,
etc.– from the growing scourge of government-sponsored bombing raids, is
to work for the imposition of a no-fly zone on the areas of conflict in the
Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile and southern Sudan.

Working for an end to the bombing of civilian targets is, we believe, the
essential first step toward ending the war. Without it, none of the other
measures that need to be taken, nor the creation of a political climate
conducive to negotiation, will be possible. At the very least, imposition of a
no-fly zone over the principal areas of conflict will act as a sign of the
determination of the international community to bring an end to the civil
war. The imposition of a no-fly zone will also signal the Khartoum regime
that the time for declarations and condemnations is over; and that practical
measures are at hand.

A no-fly zone will help create an immediate lessening of hostilities. This will,
in itself, save countless lives, allow the return of refugees to begin and
humanitarian relief to reach all areas of the war zone.

Once the no-fly zone is in place, a comprehensive cease-fire could and should
be implemented.

2. STOP OIL EXPLORATION AND EXPLOITATION. Another policy objective
high on the agenda revolves around the issue of Sudan’s oil resources and
the pivotal role the exploitation of those reserves is playing in the recent
escalation of the conflict.

We call upon the USCC to join us in urging corporations, investment firms
and other economic entities in North America, Europe, and Asia, to cease
profiting from oil riches which are exploited at the expense of millions of
central and southern Sudanese citizens, and which only serve to fuel
Khartoum’s war machine and the gross violations of the fundamental human
rights which arise from the exploitation of those resources. In particular, we
wish to call attention to the fact that oil exploration and development is
serving to justify ethnic cleansing on a mass scale in areas of northern Bahr
al-Ghazal, Southern Blue Nile, Upper Nile, and the Nuba Mountains, and the
displacement of whole populations. We are calling for a complete halt to the
exploration, extraction, production, and sale of Sudanese oil until such
practices can be shown, through independent verification, to no longer
contribute to the war effort and the human rights violations that accompany
it.

As with the campaign to end apartheid in South Africa, the international
economic interests that, wittingly or unwittingly invest in injustice and
genocide must be confronted if the conflict is to be ended. The Church will
also wish to stress in the context of Sudan and oil that the wealth derived
from a country’s natural resources must be used to benefit the people who
live on the land, not empower an unprincipled elite to engineer their
dispersal and destruction.

3. STOP “POLITICAL” FAMINE; END KHARTOUM’S FLIGHT BANS ON RELIEF.
The use of food as a “weapon” of war by the GOS, and the food shortages and
outbreaks of famine that have come in its wake, has been perhaps the single
most devastating aspect of the Sudan conflict, resulting in the deaths of
countless thousands, the internal displacement of millions and irreparable
damage to the health, particularly, of women and children. Much of this
tragedy is man-made, engineered by the GOS through the manipulation of
humanitarian aid, arbitrary flight bans, and the imposition of relief
embargoes on populations in ‘liberated’ or non-government-controlled areas,
particularly the Nuba Mountains Abyei county, and Southern Blue Nile. We
call on the USCC to join us in demanding that food and other relief supplies
be made available to populations in any and all areas of Sudan where there
is need, particularly in famine-affected areas, and to work with the US
government and the international community to put a stop to Khartoum’s
policy of arbitrary flight bans on relief.

Unfortunately, relief embargoes are not the only form that the GOS’s
starvation campaigns take. Government-sponsored raiders frequently burn
crops, fields and food stores, particularly in ‘vulnerable’ districts, in order to
create conditions conducive to famine.

4. ENSURE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM FOR ALL CITIZENS. Religious persecution
stands at the center of the tragedy of modern Sudan and is one of the
principle causes of the war. We know that the USCC will stand with us in our
demand that the right to freedom of religion– with the right to life,
foundation of all human rights– become a legal and constitutional reality in
Sudanese life. That, naturally, will include the rights of the Church to
exercise its ministry and preach the Gospel without hindrance.

The call for religious freedom is at the heart of the political reforms that will
be required to end Sudan’s long nightmare of war and destruction.
Khartoum’s decades-old assertion that Sudan is an Arab, Muslim country and
its campaign to realize, by force if necessary, the dream of one nation, one
culture, one religion, has deprived millions of non-Arab, non-Muslim
Sudanese of their most basic rights as citizens and as cultures. As the IGAD
Declaration of Principles rightly recognizes: Sudan will not resolve its
fundamental problems, nor secure a lasting peace without firmly
establishing in law a constitutional separation of religion and state. In a
country of nearly unparalleled cultural and religious diversity, Shari’a cannot
function as the source of law and public policy.

In the short term, this means that we urge the USCC to join us in opposing
not only the infamous Missionary Societies Act of 1962, but also its various
modifications and revisions, most of which have only made the situation of
non-Muslims worse. A fundamentally discriminatory law cannot be
‘modified’ or ameliorated; it must be abrogated in toto.

It should also be stated that we recognize that the Islamist ideology
undergirding the current Khartoum regime is a travesty of normative Islam
and the views of many Sudanese Muslims.

5. STOP SLAVERY AND PROMOTE THE WELFARE OF FORMER SLAVES.
Slavery – the abduction, especially, of women and children – is yet another
weapon in Khartoum’s campaign of ‘total’ war against the populations of the
Nuba Mountains, southern Blue Nile and southern Sudan. We urge the USCC
to stand with us, not only in condemning this heinous violation of human
rights, but in helping us to end the practice on the ground, and to care for
and educate the thousands of former, or ‘redeemed’ slaves, especially those
who live in IDP camps and settlements.

It deserves to be noted that the GOS helped revive this horrific trade on a
mass scale, armed the principal perpetrators, and continues to employ slave
taking as part and parcel of its strategy of war.

Khartoum targets the most vulnerable members of the community – women
and children – knowing that, in doing so, it strikes at the very heart of the
resistance to its policies, and at the morale, indeed, the very future of the
communities against which it wages its campaigns.

6. DEFEND THE RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION. The right to self-
determination is one of the major components of the resolution of the Sudan
conflict – a fact to which all parties to the conflict agree, and which forms
part of the IGAD Declaration of Principles as well. We ask the USCC to join us
in underling the importance of this principle, and in urging the international
community to ensure its implementation.

To speak of self-determination is not to imply support for southern
independence, or other secessionist aims. It is to recognize that the citizens
of Sudan, who, in differing ways, have suffered so deeply as a result of the
conflict, have their necessary and decisive role to play in deciding the shape
of a future Sudan.

In making these recommendations, we recognize the timeliness of the
delegation’s visit to Sudan and the emergence of a bipartisan political climate
in the US increasingly favorable to making Sudan and a negotiated
settlement of the war a foreign policy priority. In order to take advantage of
this situation and to further the implementation of these recommendations,
we urge the USCC to form an ad hoc committee on lobbying strategy at the
earliest possible opportunity. In our view, the task of this committee would
be to develop precise goals and objectives for each of the above
recommendations and to coordinate efforts to achieve them, both in
Washington, DC, and in the international arena.

A final note: We urge the USCC to include the Nuba Mountains and Southern
Blue Nile as well as the South in their declarations and statements on Sudan.
It is not an accurate representation of the situation to refer to southern
Sudan as if it were the sole arena of the war. The conflict affects not only the
populations of the South, but all African ethnic groups in the country,
threatening the loss of their incomparable cultures, traditions and languages.

Submitted on behalf of the bishops of the Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Regional
Conference (SCBRC) by:

Most Rev. Macram Max Gassis
Bishop of El Obeid
Chairman of the Department for Advocacy and Media