880 slaves freed in Sudan but many left, group says

Reuters | February 5, 2005

[HAL9000]

GENEVA (Reuters) - Some 880 slaves, said to have been abducted in southern Sudan by government-backed raiders, have been freed, but tens of thousands are still held in Darfur and elsewhere, a Swiss-based group said on Friday.

Christian Solidarity International said the government had transported 607 freed slaves, mainly women and children, back to southern Sudan from northern Sudan, while CSI had helped free 273 slaves, mainly boys.

"880 liberated slaves returned to their homeland of northern Bahr El Ghazal, southern Sudan, between January 23 and February 2," the Zurich-based group said in a statement. It has spearheaded a controversial campaign to buy back slaves.

"Tens of thousands of black Sudanese women and children remain enslaved in Sudan -- mainly in Darfur and neighbouring Kordofan -- notwithstanding the peace agreement signed by the government of Sudan and SPLA," it added.

"The majority of women and older girls said they were raped or gang-raped while in bondage," CSI statement said.

The government clinched a peace deal last month with the southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA), ending more than 20 years of civil war in the south.

Sudan's government, which has always denied that slavery exists in Africa's largest country, set up a committee in 1999 to investigate and eradicate abductions of women and children.

In the western Darfur region, two main rebel groups took up arms in early 2003, accusing the government of neglect and of giving Arab tribes preferential treatment.

The peace process has facilitated the liberation of southern Sudanese slaves, but "the capture and enslavement of black (African) women and children by government-backed Arab militias continues in Darfur", CSI said.

"The government appears to be using the same method against the African population in Darfur by arming militia. The description of the raids is identical," CSI's Sudan programme head, John Eibner, told Reuters.

But chaos in Darfur had prevented the group from doing the extensive documentation it had done in southern Sudan, where it documented 80,000 liberated slaves since 1995, he said.

Most had reported "gross abuse by their Arab Muslim masters", including beatings, death threats, forced Islamisation and Arabisation and racial and religious slurs.

[tkathy]

Islam is the worst ideology that ever happened to the world. Far worse than communism and fascism.

[Wilhelm Tell]

And the UN says there is nothing much wrong in Sudan. Mass killings? Slavery? Kidnapping and raping children? No problem! But the USA is bad, bad, bad! If I could smuggle weapons to the people in Sudan who are being slaughtered by the Islamofascists I would. This is the 21st Century -- **** the

---

who still practice the ancient barbarism of slavery!

[highpockets]

who still practice the ancient barbarism of slavery!

African Africans.

While African Americans seek reparations from American Americans, whose ancestors may or may not have enslaved African Americans; African Americans do not seek reparations from the descendants of African Africans who did enslave African Americans

Perhaps American Americans should only feel as much responsibility towards the African American desire for reparations as do the African Africans feel about the rights of African Africans they currently enslave.

[underlying]

muslims and nonmuslims