|
The
War in Sudan
by
Frederick Cedoz, Executive Director, IASPS Washington,
DC
The Friday, April 6,
2001 edition of the Washington Times carried a story about Washington area Jewish
community groups distributing reading material to their
members regarding the slavery and religious persecution
of Christian and animist minorities in Sudan.
More attention to this issue and the search for a
proper end to such practices is required, but this is a
positive step.
On March 27th
the U.S. House of Representatives International
Relations Committee’s Subcommittees on Africa and
International Operations and Human Rights held a joint
hearing on the genocide and religious persecution of
Christian and animist minorities in Sudan.
This hearing was remarkable not only for the fact
that it generated a standing room only crowd, but also
for the fact that it crystallized the building efforts
of so many NGOs who have been speaking and acting on
this issue for some time, and for the show of government
unity and bipartisan support that this issue has created
in the early days of the Bush administration.
Sadly, both of
Washington’s newspapers as well as the New
York Times and Wall
Street Journal were silent in their March
28th editions about the importance of this hearing.
We hope that such an oversight is just that and
that feature articles are in development on the
atrocities in Sudan, similar to the one highlighted in
the current US News
& World Report.
IASPS has been
working on this behind the scenes with NGOs and
government leaders and bureaucrats telling them the
truth about what is happening to religious minorities in
south Sudan for more than a year.
In a civil war that has stretched on for more
than 17 years more than 2 million people have been
killed. Currently
more than 4 million people have been displaced as a
result of a systematic effort by the National Islamic
Front (NIF) government in Khartoum to move indigenous
populations away from the lucrative oil fields almost
exclusively in the South and to effectively depopulate
the Christian opposition.
In the coming weeks
and months, IASPS will launch a new program called the Africa
Initiative, which will focus on Africa’s
strategic importance to the United States and how to
develop the continent, and end atrocities like slavery
and forced religious conversion in the 21st
century. | 
