20. February 2011: 105 killed in fighting between South Sudan army and rebels
20. February 2011: 105 killed in fighting between South Sudan army and rebels Read More »
8. February 2011 – Tomo reports from Sudan: I can only hope there will be no recordings!
I CAN ONLY HOPE THERE WILL BE NO RECORDINGS
I can only hope that there will be no recordings from the mini cameras we distributed on the border between new Sudan and what is left of the old Sudan. Otherwise, the worst has happened. The things we have feared the most.
The thing that we – us, who observe the situation unfolding alongside the longest river in the world and in the land abundant with oil reserves and most fertile soil resting under the feet of the most aboriginal people still living on this planet – fear the most is an aggressive reaction of the Arabs, from whom the international west-based corporations have finally looted half of the richest African colony with the January independence referendum. What we fear most is the revenge of the Arabs over the aboriginal African tribes that our peace activists have forgotten about or intentionally bargained in exchange for their own benefits in the south of Sudan. Those of us, who care about the basic rights of the most innocent indigenous people, fear that our efforts, including all the campaigns in the last twenty years, have accomplished nothing at all.
The local people in Darfur in the west at the Chad frontier line, in Abyei province, in the Nuba Mountains in the middle of Sudan and in the Blue Nile province at the eastern Ethiopian frontier have shared similar feelings of insecurity visiting each other over the last two months. The native people in these enclaves (who represent most of the country’s population), who stayed above colonial demarcation line established in 1956 between North and South Sudan and confirmed also with the peace agreement after the longest African war in 2005, fear of a new strike of war.
Their co-fighters from the African tribes in the south of Sudan, with whom they fought for decades shoulder to shoulder against the former slave hunters, exploitation, marginalization and extermination, have now – as they have reached their goal – left them in the lurch. And so did their former sponsors – hiding behind the most famous names of the world humanitarian industry, who are now victoriously gathering in the new capital of the new African country, a land flowing with water and oil – and the corrupted leaders of the rebellion, who replaced uniforms for business suits and are taking over the best businesses. Of all the big media and the most powerful creators of the planet’s public opinion, Al Jazeera was the only one to prepare a footage in which it somewhat depicted the circumstances in which the Nubas from South Kordofan found themselves in without their co-workers after they beeing abandoned by most humanitarian organizations.
The world media don’t report to their mislead audience that the Sudan government army has regularly bombarded the rebels in South Kordofan also at the time of the January referendum, banning the new refugees across the tri-border where Sudan, Central African Republic and Chad intersect. Nor do they report that this tri-border is in the hands of Uganda’s LRA rebels (Lord’s Resistance Army) known for their most horrifying acts of violence. Nor have they reported that the military and security intelligence of the Arab government in Khartoum accused of the biggest crimes against humanity, is moving more and more Arabs to the Nuba Mountains and is again distributing weapons to them. There wasn’t one word in the media about the mass protest meetings where the Nubas have demanded the registration for province governor elections and public consultation written in the CPA peace agreement that would allow their voices to be heard. There is no mention of the oublics consultation that finally did happen in the Blue Nile province last week. They didn’t report about the fact that most of the Ingassana and Uduk people as well as other native tribes have demanded their autonomy from the Arabs. They haven’t revealed that the autonomy will never happen because the public consultation is only eyewash for the natives as the Blue Nile province was long ago sold to the Arabs by the international speculators in exchange for the most oil rich province of Abyei. At the time of the referendum the number of victims here ranked high because the Arabs instigated marginalized Arabic nomadic shepherds of the Myseria tribe that the African Dinka will not let them flock their herds on the traditional paths to the green meadows south of the demarcation line anymore, and thus the Arabs were creating war.
In his speeches the Sudanese dictator Omar al Bashir is promising that after the separation of the south he will change the legislation and enforce Sharia Law in all the remaining parts of once the biggest African country. »There will be no time to discuss cultural and ethnical differences… Sharia Law and Islam will be the foundation of the new legislation, Islam will be the official religion and Arabic will be the only official language.« There will be no benevolence for ethnic minorities and other religions.
»Ein Land, Ein Volk, Ein Führer!«
This is the politics which the aboriginal African tribes fear, the tribes that are left exposed at the mercy of the Arabs beyond demarcation line.
I can testify that between the rebels in Darfur who were counting on the support of the south and the south SPLA/M army there really aren’t that many connections that would help me get to the Jebel Marra Mountains in central Darfur, where in 2006 – right before the soldiers of the African Union betrayed me and handed me over to the Sudanese military security intelligence service – I have left the Fur controlled by the SLA commandant (Sudan Liberation Army), Abdel Wahid. Of all the people of Sudan the Fur have been besieged the most by different armies and therefore cut from the rest of the world and practically inaccessible for all reporters. I can testify that the SPLA in the Nuba Mountains doesn’t even pay the teachers. I can testify that Abdel Aziz, the SPLA/M commandant in the Nuba Mountains and the deputy governor of South Kordofan is quickly losing power in comparison to his superior, the infamous governor Mohamed Harun, known for the biggest crimes in Darfur. I can testify that Malik Agar Ero, the SPLA commandant and governor in the Blue Nile province is doing everything he can so the Arabs would not banish his army form the province even though according to the CPA peace agreement it should be the other way around – it is the Sudanese government army who is supposed to leave the Blue Nile province.
Over the last two months on the edge of Darfur, in Abyei province, in the Nuba mountains and in the Blue Nile province I wasn’t only checking to see if the ending of my book Oil and Water came to the right conclusion (the book was published in Slovenian in December 2010) nor was I filming a new documentary on the same victims at the new sacrificial altar on the border between the new African country and what is left of Sudan. I have, in collaboration with the new non-government organization called HOPE, which was established by Klemen Mihelcic and his adherents last year after he returned from Darfur (not to make a career out of it and benefit from the humanitarian contributions – we all cover our own expenses – but to help the body of humanity to see and hear and feel the pain and prevent the worst suffering), tried to find the right way and the right people to entrust them with the mini video cameras and devices for accessing the world wide web.
This idea is not a new one. It came to me in 2006, right before the then Slovenian president Janez Drnovšek sent me as his personal emissary to Darfur. What we have experienced in the campaign for preventing genocide over the Nuba people was again confirmed with the new genocide situation among African natives in Darfur. What the Arab exterminators and rapist mercenaries fear most is getting caught on tape and their actions being publicly exposed. That is why I suggested to president Drnovšek to introduce a system that would enable an observation from the sky and on land and prevent evil in the heart of darkness with a little light which no criminal appreciates, and at the same time help bring the criminals to justice at the International Criminal Court in Haag. During his visit in Washington in January 2006, president Drnovsek asked the American administration for help but since he had been present at the inauguration of the first democratically elected Indian after 500 years of the conquista, Evo Morales, in Bolivia, his notion was not supported.
That is why – in spite of the natives on the vulnerable border between the North and South Sudan suspecting George Clooney, (the Hollywood actor and co-founder of ‘Not on Our Watch« team) and other activist organizations, which in January, right before the referendum, started the 750.000$ satellite control action in Sudan, of only doing this to gain control of the Sudanese oil fields – I am still in favour of taking the risk. It is possible that the American activists who are connected to the most advanced security services might above all things spy on the activities of the Arab and other Asian military forces and use this in favour of international corporations. Only the results and analysis will show the true effect of satellite control – its effect on current politics, which has already lost its pride and dignity, and its effect on the natives who have now with the satellite control been deprived of their last right to privacy – even so I am up for it now.
Two weeks ago we were told that there was a pregnant woman in the south border of the Nuba Mountains who got her embryo cut out of her belly which they then used as a target, throwing it up in the air and playing with it…
The mother, who had to look at the death of her child as the last scene of her life, probably couldn’t care less for privacy if she still had this option.
The satellite control is clearly not enough. We need to monitor what is happening at the altar of the world also from the mole hole. We need to get the cameras to the people in enclosed spaces where there are extortion, corruption, rape and conflicts going on and are instigating people into war…
Such atrocities can be prevented using video cameras on land.
That is why we are placing the smallest video cameras in the world that can be hidden and are not a danger to those who use them as a preventative measure and as a way to document what is happening to them.
For the first time in history we have this opportunity. Never before did our ancestors have the kind of technology that would enable the victims to cry for help by themselves and hope to be heard and seen by the still sensitive people that co-inhabit the planet.
This is the best way to use the cameras. In no other situation could the cameras be implemented more justifiably. This is the most beneficial way to use them for human good. Instead of using them for misleading and stultifying the masses, the cameras can now serve as miniature spying eyes and ears of the public.
We no longer have to wait for their feedback. We have our first experiences from 2006 when the women in the areas controlled by Darfurian rebels asked me to stay with them because if the Janjaweeds know that my cameras are there they will not attack. In 2008 when I personally delivered the first cameras, computers and satellite phones – for which the Slovenian and African musicians raised money at the charity concert in the “Festivalna dvorana” in Ljubljana, Slovenia – the humanitarian coordinator Suleiman Jammous told me a month later that there were no more reports of rapes in places where his people spread the news of mini cameras being distributed.
The locals trust us. In Darfur, Abyei province, Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile province the cameras were accepted by the rebel leaders and the people who need them most. The SPLA/M commandant and deputy governor of the Nuba Mountains, Abdel Aziz, and SPLA/M commandant and Blue Nile province governor, Malik Agar Ero, each took one. Those who are directly under threat understand the most and in spite all that is happening to them and to the rest of us they continue to have faith that this time we will not let them die alone with their children.
Yes, of course there is fear that we and our cameras and satellite connections will be ill-used by those who abuse the truth and manipulate the humanitarian initiatives for their own benefit. I truly fear that we, the enthusiasts in the HOPE organization and Tomo Kriznar Foundation, will be exploited for their own selfish interests on the Sudan’s soil. In the past they have managed to colonize Africa through the well-intentioned Livingstons, who succeeded in gaining people’s trust and affection, but were later replaced by pragmatists.
But in spite of all this I still think we should take the risk!
What about you?
Tomo Kriznar, Juba, South Sudan, February 7th, 2011
8. February 2011 – Tomo reports from Sudan: I can only hope there will be no recordings! Read More »
29. January 2011 – Tomo reports: People living on the margin between North and South Sudan are prisoners of local and foreign interests. They need to connect with the world immediately.
People living on the margin between North and South Sudan are prisoners of local and foreign interests. They need to connect with the world immediately. They need to do it themselves, not via international corporations or their lords – those who use them as hostages and slaves – we need to help them now so they can inform the world themselves about what is happening to them …
Kurmuk, Blue Nile Province, January 29th, 2011
But I can’t write the report. I cannot continue with it. I have been putting it together in my head in these last days. It is simply too much of everything to be looking it up in my diaries and putting it down as an organized, solid text.
Those people!
The feeling was the same as with the Nubas. In 1979 when I first visited them and twenty years later, when I found them confined to Rekha camp. Velvety hands that were touching mine as softly as a gentle breeze. Like the leaf of a silk fan. No bear paws, only light and tender touch. Mostly girls, of course. But also old timers. Kids. Everybody…
Naked bodies, naked minds… naked hearts… naked souls.
Unlike insensitive robots, bribed with comfort, they are so simple, so noncomplex, so unburdened with intellectual stuff. So pure. So innocent.
And the Arabs think of them as savages.
Savages that need to be forcedly dragged to the so-called civilized culture and arabized.
Or killed if they would not yield.
But we, Europeans, were not much better and we’re not much better still.
If our adventurers had taken wives, girls, children… and gold, ivory, pearls… and now natural resources from oil to water and coltan, then these people must have been introduced to you as savage, raw, insensitive, barbaric and above all, dangerous.
I hear the wind. I hear it far before it reaches me, I see it rumbling across the savannah under Ethiopian mountain slopes where three rivers meet. It roars, raising the sand, whirling dry leaves and grass and branches. It hits the acacias and kicks them around. Then it rushes under the tent roof and goes after me. It jerks, throwing sand in my eyes and takes my breath…
The camels lower themselves on the ground and calmly offer him their face and watch him stoically through slightly opened eyes how it hastens on through the Blue Nile Valley. The five hundred years old, gigantic and dry breadfruit trees don’t mind his presence. They have long ago fallen and retreated under the surface of the earth. Where there is peace, moisture and coolness…
Tomo Križnar
23. January 2011: Report from the ‘Public consultation’ in the Blue Nile Province (Sudan) The people in the province have done everything to avoid war.
Kurmuk, Blue Nile Province, Sudan – Sunday, January 23rd, 2011
In a large golden tent, set up in a rush on a football field among five hundred years old breadfruit trees in the centre of Kurmuk, in the Blue Nile Province by the Ethiopian frontier, loud speakers have been crackling for the second day already. Dark-skinned men of all shades of black in their traditional jelabias and European trousers, shirts and ties and most colourfully dressed women and girls are stepping behind the microphone one after another with numbered pieces of cardboard in their hands. They are stating loudly and clearly that what the Arabic Sudanese government in Khartoum had promised in the peace agreement with SPLA/M in 2005 was not realized as far as they are concerned.
‘They had five years but they did nothing!’ translates Hassan from Uduk language, the majority tribe’s tongue, to Arabic. Hassan was the designated guide assigned by the organization board of the so-called Public Consultation to the only foreigner who wants to inform the world about their situation.
‘Omar Bashir did not give us any roads, no hospital, no school…!’ the well fed and shiny oiled faces are repeating on this second day.
And they will presumably be repeating it for the whole of next week.
They finished the consultation with number 725 yesterday.
725 identical and similar statements of similar people. None of them has yet spoken for the right to be different. For the rights of the native aborigines. For those who have stayed in the mountains even after CPA (Comprehensive Peace Agreement)…
Tomo Križnar
22. January 2011: Tomo’s report from Ingassana Hills, South Blue Nile Province, SPLA Sudan
THE FIRST REPORT FROM INGASSANA HILLS, SOUTH BLUE NILE PROVINCE, SPLA SUDAN – Saturday, January 2nd, 2011
I can say that after the South Sudan Independence Referendum the Nubas are unanimously indignant, angry and determined to fight a new war with Arabic military junta on the Sudan’s north. Now, after three days in capital town Kurmuk, right on the Ethiopian frontier line, now that I have overslept the comments of tradesmen on the most untidy market place, the comments of farmers who carry the most organic millet on their donkeys and speak Arabic, of shepherds who supply the least toxic meat and know only a few English words, of students and teachers in the most wrecked up schools on the planet and of the SPLA soldiers (Sudan People Liberation Army) and of the beggars who have lost everything… now, at 6 a.m. I dare to report that the native people and the immigrants from all ends of Sudan are massively hurt, dispirited and desperate.
I will know more today after the Public Consultation. The »Comprehensive peace agreement« from 2005 should give the locals a chance to express their wishes about where they want to go after the separation of South Sudan; to the old northern country or the new south country. Their own independent country is not an option they would have anymore.
The indigenous Ingassana, Uduk and Barta people and those who immigrated during the war as refugees or SPLA soldiers, namely Dinka people, Nueri people and others, they can choose but there is no guarantee they will be heard – between the joining with their co-fighters against the then slave hunters, the freed Africans in the South Sudan to whom they are close by African blood not African culture and who deserted them already at the negotiations in Tanzania where they wouldn’t let them have their representative… and the returning to those who never stuck to any contract because one doesn’t have to keep his word when it comes to the infidels, the ‘bloody dogs who eat pigs’ and drink millet beer and live half naked in the wild… whose president Omar Bashir, accused of the biggest crimes against humanity, is promising enforcement of the fundamental Islamic laws into every pore of the remaining country that the foreigners haven’t yet managed to steal, because in these marginalized and forgotten hills of the planet on the eastern Ethiopian frontier line there is nothing except for good soil that would attract their greed…
Except for the Blue Nile.
But every local in Sudan knows that the Arabs will never give the river away, even if they need to fight a mighty war for it, because the power plant in Demazin supplies electricity to the capital Khartoum.
Tomo Križnar
20. January 2011: Tomo’s report from the Blue Nile Province
Report from the Blue Nile Province
I have just landed in Ingassana. Here in the SPLA Province beyond the northern border I am supposedly the only reporting foreigner. I came here to compare the situation in the Nuba Mountains.
I drove on a motor bike all yesterday and last night to catch a 6 a.m. flight. All the way I haven’t heard one Nuba who would still talk about peace efforts and registration for open voting and the so-called Public Consultation from the 2005 peace agreement. They were all calling only for war.
During the night the SPLA posted copies of GoS command around Kaudi, ordering to distribute weapons to Arabic Bagara people.
Right before we took off on a plane they hit us with the news of a new mother who reportedly has had her baby cut out of her belly by Myseria people.
Tomo Kriznar, Kormuk, Ingassana, Blue Nile Province, January 20th, 2011, 10:30 a.m.
This is Jakob Kodi. Jakob is his Christian name and Kodi is his Nubian name given to him in the Nuba Mountains. He was born into a Mesalit family in a village near Niyala, Darfur. He came to the Nuba Mountains with his cousin and his father in 2006. Jakob is deaf. Jakob is looking but he cannot see. What he has seen was clearly too much for him. In May 2006, after the Janjaweeds had attacked his village, Karkar, killed most of its residents, burned down all the huts and loaded their millet onto a truck, Jakob watched how they cut a embryo from his mother’s belly while she was alive and throwing it into the air and shooting until…
20. January 2011: Tomo’s report from the Blue Nile Province Read More »
15. January 2011: Tomo’s report: Mass protest meetings in the Nuba Mountains
MASS PROTEST MEETINGS IN THE NUBA MOUNTAINS – January 15th, 2011, Kauda, Nuba Mountains
Today there were protest meetings in all larger settlements in the Nuba Mountains: Kadugli, Diling, Abu Gobeih and Kauda. People demanded the Sudanese government carries out the promised and already twice postponed registration for open voting and thus enabling them their basic right – the right to vote for the governor of the their South Kordofan Province.
In Kauda – in the area completely controlled by the SPLM/A rebels (Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army) – a mass of a few thousand people of which some were carrying quickly made protest signs and shouting out slogans against the Sudanese dictator Omar Bashir and his present governor of the province, Mohamad Haroun. The crowd gathered at the airport’s entrance at the portrait of the legendary Nubian leader Yousif Kuwa and ripped the Sudanese flag from the pole and burned it.
Protest march, in which also took part all the motor bikes and terrain vehicles in the area with only one single road, then turned towards UN base where the SPLM/A leaders in the Nuba Mountains (who enjoy the utmost support of the people) told the startled UN staff (whose army looks after its interest and lives separately in isolation behind concrete bunkers and barbed wire) over the megaphones that they will no longer submissively accept the role of slaves. They have also asked the commanders, among which there were many faces of Egyptian and Chinese genes, to convey their message to those who are getting paid in Khartoum and New York.
‘We don’t want Mohamed Haroun – we want Abdel Aziza,’ asserted the young and the old healthy faces.
The International Court of Justice in Hague is charging Mohamed Haroun that he has together with Omar Bashir, as a Justice Minister organized the mass murders in Darfur in 2003 – 2008. People in the Nuba Mountains are afraid that Bashir appointed him governor so that he could now kill people in the Nuba Mountains. International human rights organizations have still not received an official answer from the UN offices to the question how is it possible that the UN agencies are transporting Haroun on their flights across Sudan on a regular basis.
Abdel Aziz is an SPLM/A commander in the Nuba Mountains that the people in villages and markets in the Nuba Mountains embraced as one of their own even though he is from the Mesalit tribe in Darfur just like Harun. People accepted Aziz in this role after the death of the legendary initiator of the slaves’ rebellion in the Nuba Mountains, Youssif Kuwa. Nubian Youssif Kuwa helped John Garang establish SPLA in Southern Sudan before Garang sent him with a group of Nubian fighters in 1986 to this place, over the demarcation line between both parts of Sudan.
To most of the ninety-nine Nubian tribes (which are different in culture) Youssif Kuwa was not only a local teacher and a soldier but also a spiritual renovator who protected them with his natural wisdom against Islamic fundamentalism and the expansion of the Arabic tribes from the Nile. Now they see much of his virtues in Abdel Aziz who has proven himself not only as a successful leader against Arabic invaders but also in time after the peace agreement between the Sudanese government and SPLM/A which he signed (with Garang’s consent and his personal faith in new uniform Sudan) under US conductor’s baton in January 2002 in a castle near Lucerne, Switzerland. The peace agreement was supposed to respect basic human rights and equality of all citizens, not end up with separation of the south.
On the photo: Mohamed Haroun and Abdel Aziz
Aziz winning the election for the South Kordofan Province governor is in Nuba’s opinion their last chance to peacefully avoid forced arabization the dictator Omar Bashir is forecasting after the South Sudan’s separation. The Hague International Court is also charging Omar Bashir (like Haroun) with the biggest crimes against humanity, including genocide.
‘We want peace – not war!’ protest signs are saying. ‘But this time we are well armed. Not like ten years ago when we had to take the weapons from the Arabs first,’ splendid young men and radiant girls are telling me while the goats are bleating around straw-covered huts, a scene that reminds me of the crib. ‘Please, tell the world that we are ready.’
To gather in protest was a decision they made last night, after the Bashir men informed them at yesterday’s meeting that the registration which should have taken place on January 8th (i.e. a day before South Sudan Independence referendum poles would open) but was postponed to today, January 15th, will not be performed nor tomorrow nor the day after. And that the elections – will not happen.
Regarding how many people protested in the Nuba Mountains and the support they got from mass Nubian protests in Khartoum, one can say that the Nubas are really well organized this time.
But the problem is the international community which is not ready. There are only three reporters in Kauda, all French. Most of western media janissaries continue to celebrate the victory of wine, bread and circuses in the south of Sudan.
Tomo Kriznar, Kauda, January 15th, 2011
15. January 2011: Tomo’s report: Mass protest meetings in the Nuba Mountains Read More »
13. January 2011: Tomo reports from the Nuba Mountains
REPORT FROM THE NUBA MOUNTAINS – Thursday, January 13th, 2011
A good month after the publication of my book, Oil and Water, I am exactly where the book begins. Among the Nuba people in the Nuba Mountains in the mid Sudan. Among black people of more than fifty African tribes that inhabit the granite mountains between the largest desert on earth and the largest marshes on the Nile – three hundred kilometres north from the border that the colonial British delineated on the map. The border between the so-called ‘Arabic Islamic Northern Sudan’ and the so-called ‘African animistic and Christian South Sudan’. I am now at the Arabic side of the border between African tribes that the international jobbers (with Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in Naiwasha, after twenty one years of war that took two million lives and banned another five million from their homes), after successful independence referendum, left at the mercy of the Arabs in exchange for oil in Abyei province and water of the longest river on the planet in a land of the greatest marshes on earth.
Last night I returned with my Nubian helpers from my first march across the mountains. Now, after one week of listening to people with whom Water and Oil starts – (seven years after my last visit in 2003) and continues with the break of war and the biggest humanitarian disaster in the western province of Darfur – I dare say that all my worst fears are coming true.
After ten years of instigations, wars and forced peace, the international oil corporations based in USA, Europe and China have finally managed to steal half of oil-logged Sudan from the Arabs in Sudan and the Arab league. After their defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan this is the first victory that is promising our western lords of natural resources the return of optimism, the end of apathy of our people and the continuation of their dominion without having to confront with arms the so-called terrorists.
All the mistakes the bushist made one after another are apparently forgotten. A new era lies ahead of us, one which will not be dominated by military lobbies but security intelligence agencies. The history that is in writing on the poles these days is proving that investment in ‘perception management’ of the people living in geostrategic locations is far more efficient than armed approach in meeting the same goals.
This sits much better with one’s conscious than the feeling of guilt when looking at the photographs of thousands of murdered children, mothers, innocent people and other ‘collateral damage’ produced on other crisis hot spots where tectonic plates of interests are breaking.
But this sits better with one’s conscious only until one realizes that the collateral damage also remains present in the new era.
I know this because I live among this collateral damage.
The Nuba people are the new cadavers of collateral damage. And so are the African tribes in Ingassana Hills on the Ethiopian frontier line. And, of course, two hundred African tribes on the plateaus and mountains of Darfur. We have left them at the mercy of now completely ravaged Sudanese slave lords.
And let’s not forget the Arabic nomad shepherd tribes who live at approximately the same geographical latitude right on the border in Abyei province. The ethnic background of the victims doesn’t matter at all. What matters is the loot.
These humble farmers and shepherds who are forbidden by Christian, Muslim and animistic religion to build Babylon towers, fly to the moon and produce weapons of mass destruction, these people have forever been seeking ways to co-exist with flora and fauna and the human world. They are the people who are now taking the hit from decades of American and European secret services’ work in the south of Sudan; they are faced with accumulated endless rage of Arabic tribes who are administering in Khartoum and in the few kilometres’ green stretch along the lower Nile.
Look at the photographs.
Aren’t they the same people as those on the 2003 photos in the book Oil and Water, whom I had left because the crisis reached Darfur?
No, they are not the same. In 2002 and 2003 when we, the activists, miraculously managed to get the peace activists from USA, Europe, Australia, Canada and New Zealand (who were in contrast to us amateurs very well paid) to the Nuba Mountains, there was so much hope in the air. The American military representative from JMC (Joint Military Commission) told us at every visit that John Danforth, Bush’s special emissary for Sudan and an upright protestant pastor from south US, managed to persuade the US Congress and the Pentagon, that the ‘Sudan problem’ can be solved. And not only by supporting SPLA rebels in the south of Sudan and dropping aid to civilians from aircrafts, but with peace that can be reached in the central Sudan, in the Nuba Mountains. And that peace can then be spread to south Sudan and other African countries and the whole of the third world countries with the helping presence of observers of peace and with carefully selected developmental help from which all the locals would benefit from.
The peace that the SPLA rebels were prepared to accept in the Nuba Mountains in the middle of Sudan. The peace also John Garang, the legendary SPLA commandant, was prepared to accept to keep Sudan together for all Sudanese people.
The peace that was signed by the then SPLA commandant Abdel Aziz with Sudanese authorities on the Nile and it remained ever since to this moment.
‘I am doing everything to keep that peace. But at the same time I am preparing for war,’ he confided in me on Saturday.
None of the people in the south of Sudan and in the Nuba Mountains that I’ve asked what happened to John Garang, answered that he had died in a plane crash in Uganda. Everyone said, without hesitation, that America killed him. ‘He would not obey!’ At the beginning of the rebellion in 1983 in Bora in the south when he took to the bush his first adherents, the charismatic leader of the slaves’ rebellion against the former American hunters was obedient. But as his power suddenly grew on account of massive support from the troops and people recruited in hay-roofed churches by the Christian missionaries, then he no longer fought for separation of the south but for Sudan to be governed by no other but the Sudanese. He fought for the kind of Sudan where no one would be a slave. For a country that would respect human rights and democratic principles. The kind of Sudan Youssif Kuwa had envisioned as well. Kuwa was the most respected SPLA commandant among the Nuba people who in 1988 started a rebellion in the Nuba Mountains against the Arabs in Khartoum. It was a reaction to their attempt to unite Sudan by announcing the Sharia Law all over the country and to arabize the nation by ‘Ein Land, Ein Folk, Ein Fuhrer’ principle.
On the faces of local people on markets with cheap China goods, on the only road built by the Chinese company, under the only power line that the Chinese installed, you can see the insecurity and fear of revenge from the humiliated Arabs on the Nubas, Ingassana, Darfurians and those on the undefined border in Abyei. You can notice the bitterness because the Dinka Shilluki, Nuer and other SPLA co-fighter from other African tribes in the south of Sudan have forgotten about them and left them to the joint enemy like the Americans and Europeans did.
Will the Chinese pragmatism managed to prevent the war?
Will the Chinese engineers and economists in jeans and T-shirts and tennis shoes take the stand for the last black Indians on the margin of rapidly sprawling Central Empire?
The killed policemen in Abyei province were Nubians and were just fresh out of police school in Khartoum.
First thing in the morning a government bomber flew strangely low over our heads. A Russian Antonov. With no headlights on…
People have just told me that unusually large number of people are pouring into Kadugli, the largest settlement, and here, into Kauda as well. The way they move and their attitude does not agree with the locals at all.
Tomo Kriznar, Nuba Mountains, January 13th, 2011
13. January 2011: Tomo reports from the Nuba Mountains Read More »
We are looking for a publisher to take the English translation of Oil and Water to press.
We are looking for a publisher to take the English translation of Oil and Water to press. The book must inform the international public of the genocide of the 21st century. 40 pages of the book have been translated and you are welcome to read it. It will give you an idea of what the book is about. The original has 470 pages plus 127 pages of graphic material.
Oil and Water – 40 translated pages (.PDF file):
DVD: Dar Fur – War for Water
DVD: Dar Fur - War for Water
DVD: Dar Fur – War for Water
The price for one DVD is 9,18 EUR + shipping costs
For more information, and to order your copy write to: narocila@tomokriznar.com
DVD: Dar Fur – War for Water Read More »