by John W. Kennedy, 09/05/2004, Pentecostal Evangel, World Missions Edition.
A decade after the world stood on the sidelines as almost 1 million people died in a 100-day genocide in Rwanda, more carnage of colossal proportions is taking place in nearby Sudan, Africa’s largest nation. “No matter what we call it — genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity — people are dying on a massive scale,” says U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia, who made a three-day fact-finding visit to Sudan in June. “What matters most now is action.”
The violence began in February 2003 when two rebel African groups took up arms against their Arab countrymen in a struggle over agricultural grazing rights and dwindling water resources. Militias known as Janjaweed began a brutal campaign to burn villages to drive out the Africans from the oil-rich Darfur. This region, roughly the size of Texas, is home to 6.7 million people in western Sudan.
An estimated 50,000 people, many of them farmers, have been killed. Another 1 million refugees have fled their homes, and 200,000 have crossed into eastern Chad. In all, more than 2.2 million people are in urgent need of food or medical attention, the U.S. Agency for International Development warns.
Displaced persons are living in 129 overpopulated refugee camps that have become breeding grounds for disease. If a political solution or massive relief effort does not occur in the coming months, 320,000 Darfuri refugees could die from malaria, diarrhea, typhoid, cholera, measles and starvation. Some experts suggest the death toll could reach 1 million without adequate relief efforts.
Already, malnutrition and child mortality rates have reached alarming levels in the refugee camps. Typically, abused women, malnourished children and wounded men reach the camps after long treks in temperatures exceeding 110 degrees. They take up residence in the camps, which are comprised of crudely constructed makeshift shelters of straw, sticks and plastic sheeting.
Jan Egeland, undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs for the United Nations, said U.N. agencies and designated nongovernmental organizations are “way behind” in providing safe water, sanitation, immunization and nutrition for the displaced Sudanese. If compassion agencies don’t step up, thousands of people, especially children, will die, according to Egeland.
National churches and missionaries in the region are prepared to equip congregations to care for the suffering. Funds donated by churches and individuals in the United States will be used to supply emergency care as well as to distribute food, water and medicine to those in need.
In the interim, Assemblies of God ministries are preparing supplies and hoping that relief for the horrible disaster can be provided soon. “At this moment all we can do is pray and prepare as fighting subsides and doors open for our best response,” says Don Tucker, director of Africa Special Ministries. “It would be heartless to hear and yet do nothing. It would contradict our calling as God’s people of grace and compassion.”
Most communities in Darfur are displaced from their homes, farms, and water access points. Of all the needs, water is the most pressing. To this point we have been able to drill four wells. The process involves community mobilization, interaction and training before the well is drilled, capped, equipped with a hand pump, and follow up afterwards. In other words, relationship is built and opportunity for the gospel central to the whole well drilling process. Each well costs us $12,000. Sites are chosen according to greatest need and least opportunity.*
According to Director JoAnn Butrin, HealthCare Ministries also stands ready to assist in the refugee camps with medicines and medical care. “So often we find as we minister to the physical needs of persons whose lives have been devastated, we have opportunity to speak of a new hope in a relationship with Jesus,” Butrin says. “In the Rwandan crisis, most patients would begin to tell their stories, with tears or anger. After a while, I would gently begin to share about the Lord and offer prayer. I was amazed at how eager people were for that prayer.”
The ongoing conflict has unfortunately led to repeated separation of children from parents and numerous orphans. In Nyala (South East Darfur) we have started a pre-school for refugees. Originally intended for 25, the school has swelled to over 150. The classrooms are bursting and we are struggling to provide the noon meal for the hungry children. To operate the school at a capacity that could include the many children on the waiting list (including feeding them one meal a day) we need an additional $3000 a month in support.*
The genocide in Sudan is being carried out by marauders who kill men, abuse women and abduct children. They burn villages, then dump human corpses and dead animals into wells to contaminate water, ensuring that the land will be uninhabitable for anyone hoping to return. Other dead, say observers, are flung into mass graves. In some cases, villagers have been chained up and set on fire. The raids generally begin in the morning. Planes bomb villages, followed by helicopter gunships that strafe buildings. Soon, Janjaweed soldiers come galloping into the villages on camels and horses to finish the job by methodical killing, raping and plundering.
THE WORLD AWAKENS
Politicians, religious leaders and compassion ministries are speaking out about what United Nations officials describe as the world’s worst present human crisis. The U.S. House and Senate unanimously approved resolutions in July declaring that atrocities in Darfur are genocide. The measures encourage President Bush to call the situation in Sudan “by its rightful name” and urge his administration to work with the international community to stop the killings.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell termed the situation a “catastrophe” and cautioned Sudan to act quickly to disarm Arab militias or else face a U.N.-imposed arms embargo and travel ban. The United Nations plans to send a peacekeeping mission to Darfur by the end of the year.
In an August 1 letter to President Bush, three dozen evangelical leaders, including Assemblies of God General Superintendent Thomas Trask, urged U.S. government action in Darfur “to take a more decisive role to prevent further slaughter and death.”
THE LONGER WAR
Separately, the Sudanese government is negotiating a deal with southern rebels to end a 21-year conflict. More than 2 million people have been killed in the unrest, primarily through famine and disease, while another 4 million have been displaced. In May, Sudan’s government signed a peace agreement with the south’s Sudanese People’s Liberation Army to end the hostilities that prompted Africa’s longest civil war.
The adversaries signed protocols on sharing power, distributing jobs, dividing income from oil reserves in the area and administrating disputed areas in central Sudan. The killings in the Darfur region threaten not only implementation of the north-south transitional government but also the end of the conflict itself.
For more than two decades, southern Sudan has been an impoverished war zone. Troops torched villages while pilots bombed schools, hospitals and churches. Children have been nailed to trees with spikes, women raped, and men decapitated and crucified. People of both genders and all ages have faced beatings, starvation and enslavement. Virtually no infrastructure remains.
After the peace agreement was signed in May, Secretary of State Powell said the United States is deeply committed to assist its implementation as well as the reconstruction and development process. By July, Powell warned Sudanese factions to end the scorched-earth killings in the Darfur region.
In an agreement with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Sudan government promised to rein in the Janjaweed, but no peace talks with the group have taken place. Three U.S. congressmen — Joe Hoeffel of Pennsylvania, Bobby Rush of Illinois and Charles Rangel of New York — were arrested in July outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, D.C., for protesting for an end to the killings.
“What is happening in the Sudan is genocide,” said Hoeffel, a member of the House International Relations Committee, after a brief detainment. “It’s ethnic cleansing — partially based on race, partially based on religion.” Human rights groups note that “genocide” is a legal term that requires a particular intent and is difficult to prove. If the United Nations uncovers genocide, it would require international action under a 1948 U.N. convention.
“Whatever you call it … this is just an appalling human rights situation that needs to be addressed,” said Leslie Lefkow, an Amsterdam-based researcher with Human Rights Watch. “The international community should be responding to it and putting the absolute maximum pressure to see some improvement.”
A CONGRESSIONAL VISIT
Congressman Wolf from Virginia made the fact-finding tour of the region with Sam Brownback of Kansas, who introduced the resolution in the U.S. Senate. They toured five refugee camps and five burned-out villages. “We have the ability to prevent further deaths and stop genocide in its tracks,” Wolf said on the House floor in July after the trip. “Our actions should follow our words.”
Wolf quoted a girl who was taken away by attackers. “I was sleeping when the attack on Disa started,” she said. “They took dozens of other girls and made us walk for three hours. During the day we were beaten, and they were telling us: ‘You, the black women, we will exterminate you, you have no God.’ At night we were raped several times.”
While he was in Sudan, a group of 44 women delivered a letter to Wolf describing how armed militiamen kept them as sex slaves for more than a week. “As a result of that savagery,” the letter read, “some of us became pregnant, some have aborted, some took out their wombs and some are still receiving medical treatment.”
“It is clear that the complete eradication of the Darfurian African population will occur if people do not return to their homes,” Wolf said on the House floor. “The Janjaweed have systematically ensured that villagers can no longer easily return. When you push people out of their villages, they die. When people are forced to live in crowded [refugee] camps, they die.”
Earlier this year, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan vowed that what happened in Rwanda 10 years ago would never happen again. Brownback believes swift action is essential if Annan’s pledge is to be kept.
“Hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake,” Brownback said after the tour. “We must not make the mistake of 10 years ago in Rwanda. It’s not enough to simply remember that mistake; we must resolve to act immediately so that we can save as many lives as possible in Darfur.”
Greg Beggs, U.S. Assemblies of God area director for East Africa, says Sudan is strategic because the country is located at the juncture of the African and Arab worlds. “It has the potential to be a bridge from the vibrant, growing, powerful national churches of sub-Saharan Africa to the spiritually desolate dry lands of North Africa,” Beggs says. “We need to empower believers in every way we can to reach out in the love of Christ to those who are in such great need.”
John W. Kennedy is news editor of Today’s Pentecostal Evangel. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
E-mail your comments to tpe@ag.org.
* This paragraph was added 6/5/2007.
