Making 'Light-Skin Babies' in Sudan

[igloo]

Making 'Light-Skin Babies' in Sudan

by: Mr. Tony R. Perkins

War, we have all heard, is hell. But sometimes we repeat that, or hear it, without thinking about its underlying truth. We dismiss it as a truism. But it is a truism forged on the anvil of bitter human experience.

While we are willing to accept the fact that war, by its nature, is hell for the soldiers involved - that is what war entails and why it should be engaged in for only the gravest of reasons - we, and by that I mean all civilized nations, have not been willing to accept the death or suffering of innocent non-combatants; innocent people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Much less have we been willing to accept the intentional targeting, the intentional killing or brutalizing, of innocent people. That is why we have the Geneva Conventions which protect non-combatants. That is why the world was horrified by the the ethnic cleansing and the rapes committed during the recent wars in the Balkans.

Yet today, grotesque atrocities are being committed in the largest country in Africa, Sudan. They are part and parcel of a long civil war that has pitted the northern, Islamic fundamentalist regime against the people of southern Sudan and other marginalized areas. During the war, the government has armed and equipped tribal militias, thereby elevating long-simmering tribal conflicts into genocide.

Genocide is not too strong a charge to make. Genocide under agreed international law is the effort to eradicate a social, religious or racial group. In Sudan, the government-sponsored militias are trying to do just that - to eradicate the African groups in Darfur, in western Sudan.

In fact, if we would just listen, we can hear the militia condemned with the words from their own mouths. In a recent account, militia members told why they engage in the systematic rape of African women during raids on villages. They want to create "light skin babies". The attackers are ethnically Arab; the women raped are black African. They seek to destroy the African cultural and racial groups by "converting" the children of the raped African women into "Arabs." The fact that this is a bizarre ethnic fantasy does not lessen the suffering of the women who are subjected to it.

The systematic rape of non-northern, non-Arab, non-Muslim women has been going on for years in Sudan. United Nations reporters, human rights groups, religious organizations, and others had reported on the attacks on villages, in which the men and elderly are killed and the women and children are taken hostage. The children are fated to have their tendons cut and forced to watch over herds of goats. If they displease their masters, they are tortured. Some are beaten to death; some have been crucified.

The fate of the women taken hostage is equally grim. They are systematically raped. Often kept in pens like animals, they are raped repeatedly by their captors as they journey north. They are raped both to break their will and to force them to have "light skin babies". And as has been documented by both religious leaders and Members of the U.S. Congress, women and children are also branded, like animals.

What word describes such treatment of one human being by another? The only word is slavery. Those who aren't killed are enslaved and treated like animals. In fact, they are treated worse than animals - anyone who tortured animals like this would be arrested in the U.S. But these women and child hostages are taken to slave markets in the north of Sudan, and are sold. They are then "owned" by someone else.

This is the reality of Sudan. It is an ugly reality. Until recently, the victims were Christian and animist people of the south. Many observers had hoped the attacks - the murder, the brandings and the rapes - would cease as the government and southern rebels signed documents that appeared to be moving the country toward peace. But, as has happened over and over again during the last 20 years in Sudan, the government took advantage of peace in one part of the country to open a new front against the civilians of another area. It is now focusing its genocidal energy on the black Muslim people of Darfur in the west.

It is time for the world to do something about this. The actions of the Sudanese regime and its militia allies violate universally accepted norms of law - their actions violate the Geneva Conventions, the Genocide Convention, and the Anti-Slavery Conventions. During the past decade, the world has acted against other instances of ethnic cleansing, of slavery, of political rape. Why is the government of Sudan permitted, through its militia stooges, to commit such atrocities? Is it because the victims are Africans? It is time to convene war crimes tribunals to try the murderers and rapists in Sudan. The victims cry out for justice. Can you hear them?

[siceone]

where is the outrage?

[igloo]

where is the outrage?

Of course not........but kills those bastards in the U.S. who put a Nativity scene in front of a school!

[fresinha12]

What a fucking piece of a bullshit propaganda. Have u seen an arab sudanese?? they are black, u put one dafuri next to a sudanese and u cant tell the difference. The are all black! they also happen to be of the same faith. What is behind all this is the oil rich field of dafur that are of such a concern to us here in the US.

PLS go on the internet search for a picture of sudanese and a dafuri, they are all the same race, black! so this is not a racial war, this a war for oil, the dafuris are trying to reclaim their land, the sudanese are trying to enforce their way over that oil rich area. simple as that, its not white or fairer babies, its black oil that plagues these SOBs.

BTW the british were behind the dafuris to instigate a revolt against the sudenese govt, then convieniently the brits claim human rights violations to counter the obviously stupid sudanese govt, which was stupid enough to fall into this trap. MY take both the Dafuri tribal leadership, the jenjaweeds and sudanese leadership should be tried for crimes against humanity along with tony blair for instigating it.

Of course not........but kills those bastards in the U.S. who put a Nativity scene in front of a school!

[igloo]

August 12, 2004, 8:44 a.m.

The Rape of Sudan

Terrorism against women and girls.

By Donna M. Hughes

Although the West has only recently taken notice of its scope and intent, the aggressive global Islamic fundamentalist movement has been underway for several decades. Among its first victims have been women and girls. The Islamists begin their reign of terror at home, forcing their own mothers, sisters, and daughters into a system of gender apartheid.

Where Islamic fundamentalists attack enemy populations, women and girls suffer even more. In Sudan in 1989, a coup installed the present military dictator Omar al Bashir, who declared Sudan to be an Islamic republic and imposed sharia (Islamic law). The Arab Islamist government intensified the long-standing conflict with the south by backing raids against the Christian and animist civilian populations. The raiders killed men and animals, burned villagers, and abducted women and children. Since 1983 — when the Sudan People's Liberation Army started the warfare that preceded Bashir's coup — an estimated 2 million people have been killed and 4.5 million people have become refugees and internally displaced persons. Two hundred thousand women and children have been captured for labor and sexual slavery. Some of the victims were trafficked into slavery and sexual servitude beyond northern Sudan to Middle Eastern countries.

Once in the north, the slaves are subjected to forced Islamization and Arabization. In Sudan, the ritualistic cutting of girls' genitals, often called female genital mutilation, is widely practiced among all religions and ethnicities, although Christians have discouraged the practice. A survey conducted by Christian Solidarity International's Slavery Research Unit on slaves liberated from the north found that 40 percent of the women and girls had been subjected to female genital mutilation while in captivity.

As international pressure for a peace agreement between the north and south intensified, and peace appeared imminent, conflict broke out in western Sudan. The inhabitants of Darfur are Muslims but from black African tribes. They are not Arab, and most significantly, not Islamist. The government seized this opportunity to ethnically cleanse the west as it has done in the south.

Government airplanes and helicopters have bombed and strafed villages, and government-backed militia, called Janjaweed — meaning armed men on horseback — have attacked civilian populations in a scorched-earth campaign of killing, raping, burning villages, and driving people from their homes. An estimated 1.2 million people have been internally displaced and 170,000 have fled across the border into Chad. An estimated 30,000 have been killed.

The widespread and systematic rape and sexual enslavement of women and girls in Darfur has been documented by Amnesty International in a report called "Rape as a Weapon of War: Sexual Violence and Its Consequences." As part of the campaign of ethnic cleansing, rapes are carried out in public, in front of family and community members. Those who resist or intervene are beaten and killed. Victims' arms and legs are broken to prevent escape. The intent is to impose terror on a village, and destroy the victims' and communities' integrity and identity. One rape victim was told by her attacker: "You, the black women, we will exterminate you, you have no God."

Additionally horrifying is the participation of Arab women in the atrocities. According to Amnesty International, Hakama — female traditional singers who praise male fighters — accompany the raiders and rapists. By singing and ululating, they provide encouragement and a song track to rape and pillage.

A report by U.S. Senator Sam Brownback and Congressman Frank Wolf, who recently visited camps in Darfur and interviewed victims, said that the Janjaweed were branding rape victims on their back and arms to permanently label them.

In western Sudan, many of the women and girls previously have been subjected to female genital cutting, including clitoridectomy and infibulation. These crude, mutilating practices of cutting away of genitalia leaves scars and inelastic tissues. Rape for these women is excruciatingly painful and can cause severe physical injuries.

There is also cultural meaning to these acts of violence: females' genitalia are considered "unclean," and by cutting them away, the girls are supposed to be made "clean" and their virginity and chastity preserved. The victims' own belief in these cultural norms causes them additional psychological trauma when they are raped.

Rape is a violation that destroys the whole of the person in the eyes of society. Sadly, the families of the victims often complete the devastation of these victims' lives by rejecting them. Fearing this, women who have been raped may avoid seeking help in refugee camps because they fear family or community members will discover their rapes.

The rape and enslavement of women and girls in Sudan is part of what the United Nations calls the world's worse current humanitarian crisis and the U.S. Congress calls genocide. It is also Islamic fundamentalist terrorism against women and girls.

An immediate and effective solution is needed to the ongoing genocide in Sudan. The world cannot remain indecisive while tens of thousands more are driven from their homes, raped, and killed. We also need to take a sobering look at the atrocities in Sudan, past and present, and understand that this is Islamic fundamentalism in practice. It is a threat to all women, everywhere.

— Donna M. Hughes is professor and holds the Carlson-endowed chair in women's studies at the University of Rhode Island.