June 11 2001

ARTICLE TOOLS

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They are crucified—the infant children nailed to trees with steel spikes—or beheaded. In a campaign of systematic genocide, Sudanese government forces spray them with helicopter gunfire to run them off oil-rich land and bomb their hospitals, schools, relief centers, and marketplaces. This is the testimony that Roger Winter, executive director of the U.S. Committee for Refugees, recently gave to the House subcommittee on Africa.

The northern Arabs pierce the lips of their torture victims, then insert and shut padlocks to keep them from telling of their ordeals. Beyond the political-economic issues in Sudan's 18-year-old civil war—the south seeks autonomy, inflicting its own military terrors upon Arab civilians—official smothering of religious freedom is part of the government forces' cruelty, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. The government in Khartoum imposed Islamic law nearly 10 years ago, and forced conversions (with accompanying genital mutilation) are common.

The commission's annual report, which identified Sudan as the world's most violent infractor of religious rights, noted that the discovery and drilling of oil reserves in the south has led to a "scorched earth" policy, driving civilians from areas around oil facilities. The government uses the facilities (airstrips and roads) for military staging, and oil revenues have enabled it to increase its weaponry and other hardware.

More than 2 million people have lost their lives due ...