GretaWire
written by Greta Van Susteren
Wednesday October 17, 2012
You know I went to Sudan (Nuba Mountain region) and South Sudan in April with Reverend Franklin Graham and Samaritan’s Purse. I brought my cameras so that I could bring you via GretaWire. I have posted many times about the cruelty that President Bashir is imposing upon innocent people. You have seen the pictures and video of the starving people — hiding in caves because Sudan’s President Bashir is burning the villages and his soldiers raping the women. I have showed you children dying of malnutrition having fled the Sudanese military trying to kill them. I have shown you bugs that the people gather to eat since they have other food. They are dying of thirst with no water and temperatures of 100 or more. They have no shoes and walk on the rough terrain that burns their feet as they try to flee the Nuba Mountains for a refugee camp in South Sudan. You have seen much and you know more about this crisis than others because this is an ignored story. I am trying to draw attention to it.
Samaritans Purse and Reverend Graham have tried to take care of those who make it to the refugee camps – it is days and days of walking with no food, no water and fearing an attack. Not everyone makes it to the refugee camps in South Sudan and you can imagine their condition if they do make it to the refugee camps — some survive, some do not. It is a dire situation. Families get split up as they flee the persecution. They have no way of ever finding each other again. I could go on and on….it is a crisis beyond description.
This posting is text and a video from American Ryan Boyette – he has been living in the Nuba Mountains for 9+ years and is married to a Sudanese woman. Ryan is trying to get the word out about what is going on — but it is hard to get attention to this crisis. I have a link below to Ryan’s website. I urge you to click on it and go there.
The posted video (which I urge you to watch) is proof of the horrible cruelty of Sudan’s President Bashir. The World looks the other way while this cruel man continues to terrorize (and murder) thousands and thousands of innocents. President Bashir is under indictment by the ICC for genocide in the Darfur region and now he has turned his attention to another part of his country – the Nuba Mountains.
Isn’t there some way to stop this? President Bashir was two weeks ago in Egypt — he should have been arrested — instead President Morsi of Egypt gave him a Head of State visit. I would have hoped the USA had enough diplomatic muscle and moral authority that Bashir be arrested when he steps out of his country and into that of our allies.
Nuba Reports obtained cell phone footage of uniformed men attacking and burning the village of Gardud al Badry, a small farming community in northeastern South Kordofan. The video, shot on May 18th, 2012, is damning proof that the campaign of violence from Khartoum wages on against the people of Nuba.
Since July 2011, when fighting escalated between the SPLA-N and Khartoum forces, villages near the front lines, like Gardud al Badry, are often the victim.
Sudan's Central Reserve Police, known as Abu Tira, a force renowned for cruel tactics, are clearly identified for the first time in video footage. During the attack, a coalition of soldiers from Abu Tira, Popular Defense Force (PDF), and Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) kidnapped four men, among them, a young student named Naim, 18. He was arrested on fabricated charges and forced confessions and taken to Al Abassiya prison where he was beaten and tortured for ten days.
Nuba Reports journalists travelled through war-torn communities of South Kordofan to meet with residents of Gardud al Badry and hear Naim's story. They walked for four days to the remote village, passing destroyed and abandoned villages on the way. For ten more days, they walked gathering evidence from the former homesteads. The journalists saw eight destroyed villages, a trail of violence left behind as the soldiers of Omar al-Bashir's army move through communities on the battle lines of this conflict.
Our reporters arrived August 1st, three days after the SAF attacked Gardud al Badry yet again.
Naim told Nuba Reports that he was awoken by the heat of his house burning. The soldiers seized him and bound him with rope. They accused Naim of planting mines for the SPLA-N, despite his student identification card proving his status at Jazeera Secondary School in Al Abassiya. In a barrage of death threats and questions, Naim agreed to the charges to avoid further beatings.
In the video, we hear the soldiers debate whether to shoot him on the spot, "Get information from him, then kill him," one soldier is heard saying. Another voice says, "He doesn't know anything. He's nothing."
Naim was detained for ten days amidst his family's mounting anxiety. His father, Mohammed, received word that Naim was in Al Abassiya and set off to find him. "We spent many days looking for him," he told Nuba Reports, "without food, without drink, and without enough sleep. We were all looking for him."
Through days of bureaucratic failures, corruption, false accusations, and high-cost ransoms, he pursued his son's release. "[T]his is my true son; if he died the whole mountain will cry for him," he said. "We are innocent and weaponless people, all we are concerned about is getting the meal of the day."
In Al Abassiya, Mohammed met resistance from security officers. According to Mohammed, one of the officers told him "I swear to God, you can take him [Naim] as a dead body, but alive, no way." Only when he negotiated with the men who burned his village and kidnapped his child, was Mohammed able to obtain Naim's release. Fareed, a leader of the PDF in Souq Algabal signed as guarantor, releasing Naim as an innocent student.
The incident in Gardud al Badry is one of many efforts to terrorize civilians in a region accused of opposing al-Bashir's ruling government. The self-proclaimed "Match Battalion," a coalition of PDF and SAF soldiers, filmed themselves setting fire to the village of Um Bartumbu in late 2011.
Residents of other villages in the region have witnessed Sudan government soldiers burning their homes. Angolo, Buram, Tess, Abu Hassan, Sara Fi, Jimizia, Delami, Mugalam, Lahamar, Tolodi Nuba are a few villages recently attacked or burned. This video provides proof that the Nuban people are the target of state-sanctioned attacks based on their ethnicity and political identification.
The violent conflict continues between SPLA-N and Sudan government forces and it is the civilians and their lands that suffer. As the village of Gardud al Badry burns in the background of the video, we hear a soldier proclaim, "With this flame, we extinguish the burning sedition in South Kordofan."
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