[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 32 (Wednesday, February 29, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H1022-H1023]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          TOO SILENT ON SUDAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, once again, the world is standing by, 
silent and passive, while the Government of Sudan wages war on its own 
people.

[[Page H1023]]

  We have been here before when hundreds of thousands of people 
perished in Darfur before the international community finally woke up 
and took action to try to protect innocent civilians from their own 
government's brutality. The humanitarian crisis continues in Darfur. 
There is no peace, and villagers, refugees, and humanitarian personnel 
still live and work under the constant peril of attack. President 
Bashir has expelled many humanitarian workers from Darfur--and even 
today, threatens to shut down their lifesaving operations.
  Last May, we witnessed the ruthless ethnic cleansing of Abyei by the 
Sudanese people. More than 100,000 people of the Dinka indigenous 
population were forcibly displaced. They fled to South Sudan, seeking 
safe haven, where they remain today in very, very poor conditions. When 
Sudanese President Bashir saw that the world was indifferent to this 
brutal assault, he began military operations in June against insurgents 
in South Kordofan and, more generally, against the Nuba people.
  And still the world stood silent.
  So, in September, Khartoum launched attacks on another border region. 
This time, the state of Blue Nile was under siege with attacks by the 
Sudanese Army and the bombings of civilians. Thousands fled to the 
neighboring countries of Ethiopia and South Sudan for safety, joining 
the desperate refugees from South Kordofan.
  So Sudan has undertaken a bloodbath against its own people in the 
states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile--house-to-house arrests and 
killings, rape, the merciless bombings of civilians.
  For nearly 8 months, Khartoum has blocked all humanitarian aid to 
South Kordofan and Blue Nile. It has not only continued to bomb in 
those states, but it has crossed the border and has bombed refugee 
camps and towns inside South Sudan, where tens of thousands had hoped 
to find food and shelter.
  Here are some photos of some people in refugee camps in South Sudan:
  Saleh Kora is from the Angolo tribe in South Kordofan. The government 
dropped bombs on her fields when she was trying to plant. Then the 
government dropped six bombs on her village. This poor woman here 
grabbed her children and hid in a nearby ditch. After the bombings 
stopped, Sudanese soldiers moved into the village and burned several 
homes. When they began shooting people, Saleh ran and hid with her 
children. The soldiers didn't care if you were an unarmed civilian, a 
woman or a child. She fled with her children across the border in 
January to the Yida refugee camp in South Sudan.
  This woman over here to my far right and her little girl are from the 
Nuba Mountains. She is married to a man who fled the nightmare of 
Darfur in 2005. Both were suffering from malnutrition when they arrived 
at the refugee camps.
  The people of South Kordofan and Blue Nile are being subjected to 
bombings, murder, rape, scorched earth, and starvation. This should 
come as no surprise when Ahmed Haroun, the Sudanese official wanted by 
the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in Darfur, 
is now the governor of South Kordofan.
  Mr. Speaker, we are fast approaching the month of March, the point at 
which the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, or FEWS NET, has 
predicted that South Kordofan and Blue Nile will reach emergency levels 
of food insecurity. This is just one level short of all-out famine. Yet 
Khartoum still denies food and medical relief to the suffering people 
of these regions.
  Last week, the United Nations Security Council called on the Sudanese 
Government and the armed rebels to allow unhindered access for 
humanitarian aid and for both sides to return to talks and to cease 
hostilities.

                              {time}  1040

  President Bashir said ``no.'' The United States and the international 
community, including China, Russia, and others, must increase the 
pressure on Sudan to allow the delivery of aid to the suffering people 
of South Kordofan and the Blue Nile, and to reach agreement on a cease-
fire. The safety and security of the Sudanese people, whether in 
Darfur, Abyei, South Kordofan, Blue Nile, or elsewhere, must be our 
first priority.
  Mr. Speaker, we have been silent for too long.

                [From the New York Times, Feb. 15, 2012]

                   In Sudan, Seeing Echoes of Darfur

                        (By Nicholas D. Kristof)

       Yida, South Sudan.--A great humanitarian catastrophe and 
     vicious ethnic cleansing is unfolding here in the remote and 
     impoverished region where Sudan and South Sudan come 
     together.
       For some in the Nuba Mountains, living in thatch huts far 
     from electricity or paved roads, the sharpest acquaintance 
     they are making with 21st-century technology is to be bombed 
     by Sudanese aircraft.
       Bombings, ground attacks and sexual violence--part of 
     Sudan's scorched earth counterinsurgency strategy--have 
     driven hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in 
     South Kordofan, the Sudanese state where the Nuba Mountains 
     are located. In some ways, the brutality here feels like an 
     echo of what Sudan did in Darfur, only now it is Nubans who 
     are targets.
       ``They said that they want to finish off the black people; 
     they said they want to kill them all,'' recalled Elizabeth 
     Kafi, a 22-year-old Nuban who said she was kidnapped in 
     December by Sudanese uniformed soldiers. She and others say 
     that the mostly Arab Sudanese soldiers scorn Nubans partly 
     for their darker skin, partly because some are Christian, but 
     mostly because many Nubans back an armed uprising against 
     decades of Sudanese misrule. In 23 days of captivity, she 
     said she saw the soldiers use guns to execute several Nuban 
     men, including her grandfather and brother-in-law. She 
     described watching soldiers gang rape and then cut the throat 
     of a young Nuban woman, and also stab to death the woman's 3-
     year-old son.
       Kafi said that she also saw 20 to 25 soldiers hold down two 
     Nuban girls, who she guessed to be about 14 or 15 years old, 
     and gang rape them. The girls died from the rapes and 
     beatings, she said.
       It's impossible to confirm Kafi's full story, but others 
     verified that she had been kidnapped. And many other Nubans 
     recount similar attacks, or describe similar racial epithets. 
     As in Darfur, the Sudanese soldiers often call their darker-
     skinned victims their ``slaves.'' Ahmed Haroun, a Sudanese 
     official wanted by the International Criminal Court for 
     committing crimes against humanity in Darfur, is now the 
     governor of South Kordofan, and he seems to be employing 
     similar tactics here.
       While the Sudanese government is trying to suppress an 
     armed rebellion in the Nuba Mountains, it is civilians who 
     bear the brunt of the suffering. In an apparent effort to 
     starve the rebels, Sudan is blocking aid groups and food 
     assistance from reaching the area, and the United Nations 
     Security Council a few days ago expressed ``deep and growing 
     alarm'' at rising hunger levels there. Some 28,000 Nubans 
     have sneaked out and settled in a new refugee camp here in 
     Yida, South Sudan, just south of the border with Sudan. 
     Scores more straggle in most days, many half-starved.
       ``I came because I was starving,'' said Muhasin Kuwa, a 24-
     year-old woman who just arrived at the refugee camp. Both her 
     parents had starved to death, along with seven small children 
     in her small village, she said.
       The Sudanese military has tried to block access routes, 
     making escape perilous. I spoke to members from a group of 16 
     who had crowded into a car, paying $45 each for what they 
     hoped would be a flight to safety in the refugee camp. But 
     then, the day before I interviewed them, they came to a 
     checkpoint manned by Sudanese soldiers.
       ``They called us over,'' said the vehicle's owner, Haroun 
     Suleiman, 42. ``Then they shot at us with guns.''
       Two male passengers, ages 41 and 25, were shot dead, he 
     said. Two women, one with a month-old baby, are still 
     missing. The others ran frantically into the bush and 
     escaped, eventually making their way to the refugee camp.
       The Sudanese government bombed this refugee camp in 
     November, and, just a week ago, it bombed the nearby town of 
     Jau, in South Sudan. Fears are growing of a new all-out war 
     between Sudan and South Sudan, in part because of an oil 
     dispute. South Sudan separated from the rest of the country 
     just in July, and the two sides can't agree on the oil 
     pipeline fees that the South should pay. The South then shut 
     off oil production, so both countries are now facing an 
     economic crisis. Some experts warn that the North may try to 
     seize oil wells from the South.
       Nuban children are already growing up in war. When kids 
     surrounded me in the refugee camp, I asked them how many had 
     lost a brother or sister in the war. About one-third raised 
     their hands.
       When the food runs out in the Nuba Mountains, perhaps in 
     two or three months, there will be a risk of mass starvation. 
     I saw one 4-year-old girl at a feeding center run by 
     Samaritan's Purse, the aid group, who weighed only 22 pounds. 
     Unless outside countries enforce humanitarian access into the 
     Nuba Mountains, we can expect more famished children like 
     her.
       The Sudanese armed forces try to keep aid workers and 
     journalists out, so the story of suffering has not received 
     much international attention. I'm going to try to slip into 
     the Nuba Mountains and report back. Stay tuned.

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