Sudan militia violence spreads to south-churches
NAIROBI, May 20 (Reuters) – Government-backed Arab militias have razed the homes of some 23,000 villagers in southern Sudan, despite talks to end 21 years of civil war, a senior church official said on Thursday.
The homes in the Upper Nile region have been destroyed over the past four days, forcing thousands to flee, said Bishop Hamilton Mvume Dandala, secretary-general of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC).
The systematic burning of grass hut villages in Upper Nile was reminiscent of the conflict in Sudan’s western region of Darfur, which the United Nations has called one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, said Dandala, who recently returned from a six-day trip to Sudan.
“While the graphic media reports have caused all of us the world over to focus attention primarily on Darfur, we were informed that government-backed militias are raiding villages in the Upper Nile around Malakal with equal zeal,” Dandala told a news conference in Nairobi.
“Together with Darfur, the recent unfolding situation truly lends itself to a genocide in the making. It resembles Rwanda 10 years ago when the world merely watched as tragic events took place,” he added.
Some villagers viewed the raids as an attempt to undermine hopes of a peace accord between the Khartoum government and southern rebels, while others thought they indicated a lack of political will to end Africa’s longest civil war, Dandala said.
Negotiators are making slow progress in Kenya-hosted talks to end the war that pits the Islamic Arabic-speaking government against rebels seeking greater autonomy for the mainly animist and Christian south. Oil, ethnicity and ideology are complicating factors.
The peace process in Kenya does not cover the separate rebellion in Darfur, where rebel clashes with government troops have displaced about one million people and forced an estimated 120,000 more to flee across the border to Chad.
Aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres warned on Thursday of the risk of famine in Darfur where there are “dangerously high” levels of malnutrition and mortality coupled with a rapidly deteriorating food security situation.
Dandala also described conditions in three refugee camps he visited close to the capital Khartoum as “hell on earth”.
“Here, children, women, the old and young languish in the hot sand with temperatures ranging between 42 degrees centigrade, up to 47 degrees (107-116 degrees Fahrenheit),” he said.
The AACC groups churches and institutions representing some 120 million Christians across the continent.