NGO reports 880 slaves freed, returned to southern Sudan
By JASPER MORTIMER, Associated Press Writer
CAIRO, Egypt, Feb 4, 2005 (AP) — Northern Sudanese have freed 880 slaves during the past two weeks and they have returned to southern Sudan, a senior official of a Swiss-based NGO said Friday.
In Khartoum, the Sudanese Foreign Ministry’s director of information, Jamal Ibrahim, said he had no information on the freed slaves. Other government officials could not be reached on the Friday holy day.
Sudan denies the existence of slavery in the country but acknowledges that tribesmen “abduct” people. Under international pressure, the government set up the Committee for the Eradication of the Abduction of Women and Children, a body of civil servants and tribal representatives.
John Eibner, the director of the Sudan program for Christian Solidarity International, said 607 slaves were freed by CEAWC and a second group of 273 slaves were freed by the Arab-African peace committees that are supported by his organization.
He said Christian Solidarity International organized meetings of the peace committees and gave the slaveholders cattle vaccines as an “incentive.”
“There was no cash transaction,” Eibner said in a phone interview from Zurich.
Christian Solidarity International had been criticized in the past for paying cash to liberate slaves.
The releases took place between Jan. 23 and Feb. 2 and Christian Solidarity International is helping to reunite the former slaves with their families in the southern province of Bahr el-Ghazal, Eibner said. It is also providing them with food and blankets, cooking pots, mosquito nets, sickles and fish hooks.
The kidnapping of women and children was a feature of the civil war between north and south Sudan that ended with a peace treaty signed Jan. 9. International television channels broadcast footage of people paying cash donated by a Western charity to liberate slaves held by northerners.
“This whole activity of taking slaves is part of the civil war. That is why when you have a peace process, all of a sudden, it stops,” Eibner said.
Eibner said the peace treaty had put pressure on the holders of slaves to release them. Slave masters, who tend to be northern Arabs, “know the government will not protect them if international pressure grows for prosecution” of slave owners.
Eibner said boy slaves are used to herd cattle and goats while women and girl slaves are usually used for cooking, washing or working in the field.
“Sexual abuse for women tends to be the norm,” he said.
Eibner said he would not be surprised if some of the newly freed slaves had been abducted as long as 20 years ago. The civil war broke out in 1983.