300 'Freed' Sudanese Slaves Disappear From Government Custody
 
All Africa News Agency
June 19, 2000
By Frederick Nzwili

Nairobi - The 300 Sudanese slaves transferred during the past six months from their Arab owners to the custody of the government of Sudan are missing, according to 24 Dinka chiefs and civil administrators in northern Bahr El Ghazal region.

The slaves had been handed over to a recently established committee for the Eradication of Abduction of women and Children CEAWC. Christian Solidarity International CSI confirmed here that they had information from the chiefs that only twenty of the 300 had returned.

But some had escaped from the CEAWC concentration camp in a town called Aweil. Last month, Nance Weber, a UNICEF spokeswoman in Khartoum, announced that some 300 abducted black African women and children had been identified in western Sudan and returned to their homes.

CEAWC is financially and politically supported by the European Union and Canada. This security organ of the government of Sudan was established last year to cover up crimes against humanity as slavery, identified in the international law and committed by the Khartoum government as part of its Jihad.

CEAWC and its western financial supporters have therefore placed a taboo on the use of the word slavery in the Sudanese context, and instead have referred it to abduction.

The European Union and Canada are in the forefront of the effort to rehabilitate the government of Sudan within the years of international community after years of isolation as a result of its involvement in the international terrorism and gross abuses of human rights.

CSI estimates that there are over 100,000 chattel slave and others subjected to slave-like practices in the areas controlled by the government of Sudan. CSI calls on UNICEF to guarantee the return of the slaves and others held in the areas controlled by the government of Sudan.

The organisation also called on UNICEF to guarantee the return of Sudanese slave to their homes and immediate families in New Sudan. About 3,900 slaves have been liberated from bondage between May 25 and June 1 through the combined efforts of Arab and Dinka tribal leaders and CSI.

CSI has also paid Arab slave retrievers a redemption fee of 50,000 Sudanese pounds - the local price of two goats - for each returned slaves. A total of 33,900 have been freed through this system since 1995.

Freed slaves have revealed systematic and psychological torture including gang rape, beating, and deaths threats, forced conversion to Islam, female genital mutilation and forced labour without pay.

The slaves were captured in raids undertaken by armed forces of the government of Sudan, in particular the popular defence force, and the Murahaleen militiamen.

Slave raids have been used by the government as an important element of its counter insurgency policy since the outbreak of the current phase of the Sudanese civil war in 1982.

CSI estimates that there are over 100,000 chattel slaves and others subjected to slave-like activities. The heaviest concentration is in southern Darfur and Southern Kardofan. Last year, UNICEF declared that redemption of the black African slaves was absolutely intolerable by the captors.