War of Domination

Convicted war criminals gover in caves to escape aerial attac What will it take to end the cris 8

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Photography by Eyes and Ears of God: Video Surveillance of Sudan

A War of Domination

by Faith McDonnell

rn openly while families hide cks by their own government. sis in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains?

W Some images in this article are graphic and/or sensitive in nature and may not be appropriate for children.

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any signs have come to prove what Jesus said is true,” sing hundreds of young people in unison, their faces shining. “We have seen these many signs among us, like hunger, starvation, and war.” The teenagers and young adults in this choir have personally endured precisely these hardships, but their faith in a better future is palpable as they sing, “God brought peace and stopped the war! Brother, God has raised his hand to stop the bad things!”1 They sing and dance under the open sky. Rounded, rocky hills rising from lush, grassy plains provide the backdrop.

The Kurche Youth Choir in the Nuba Mountain region of Sudan’s Southern Kordofan state was captured on video in 2006.2 After decades of genocidal war waged by a government attempting to forcibly create a homogeneous Arab/Islamic state, a 2002 ceasefire and the 2005 north/south Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) had produced relative peace. Some 50 different Nuba Mountain tribal groups, collectively called “the Nuba,” were rebuilding their lives after God raised his hand to stop what the singers above refer to understatedly as “the bad things.” The Body of Christ was emerging from ferocious persecution. Church leaders were restoring razed churches and schools and constructing new ones.

But life is far different now. For over a year Sudan’s National Congress Party (NCP) government, led by President Omar Hassan al Bashir—who was indicted in 2009 by the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a war criminal3—has waged an extermination campaign against the Nuba. The land is blackened where NCP troops burned crops, herds, houses, schools, and churches. The earth is pockmarked by aerial bombardment and mass graves. House-to-house searches and executions have silenced the singing.

Nuba civilians are either dead, hiding in mountain caves where they are cut off from food and water by the NCP, or have fled over the border to South Sudan refugee camps. Today, Sudan advocates in the US urge prayer and action on behalf of the Nuba, fearing for their very survival.

Hundreds of thousands of Nuba citizens have relocated to caves in the hopes of avoiding aerial attacks by Khartoum.

another of Sudan’s ICC-indicted war criminals, Ahmed Haroun. The 11thhour defeat of popular favorite, Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) war hero Abdelaziz Adam Al Hilu, was more than suspect. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the political party affiliated with the SPLA, announced that they rejected the results and would “peacefully struggle” against Commander Haroun’s recognition.6 The NCP decided to use the crisis to set in motion their long-planned extermination of the African Nuba.7 Haroun, who was Khartoum’s strategist for the Darfur genocide, demanded the immediate disarming and expulsion of SPLA troops from the region. This violated the CPA protocol for the Nuba Mountains that stipulated that the SPLA’s northern forces remain active in Southern Kordofan for a set time after the elections and the July 9, 2011, secession of South Sudan.8 Even before SPLA Nuba forces (now the SPLA-N) resisted this ilEthnic cleansing legal order, Khartoum started a war. In April 2011 they had attacked Al On June 5, 2011, sources on the ground reported that war had begun.4 A Hilu’s home village, torched his house, and killed 29 people, but Al Hilu had restrained the SPLA from retaliating.9 Now the Sudan Armed Forces fraudulent election5 in May had given Southern Kordofan’s governorship to (SAF) moved heavy weapons and tanks into Southern Kordofan’s capital, Kadugli, and Women and children demonstrate against the ineffective presence of the United created a military air base. An SPLM press reNations Missions in Sudan (UNMIS).

“after

500,000

dead and years of broken promises, marginalization, and persecution, the Nuba people have had enough.”

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SPLA-N rebels pose after a victory in the Nuba Mountains, during which tanks and aircraft were captured from the NCP forces.

lease on June 6, 2011, warned, “The mission of SAF is to disarm [the] SPLA in Southern Kordofan, clear the area of Nuba, and settle Arab tribes there as done in Darfur and Abyei.”10 Khartoum has made it clear over the decades that while they want the mineral-and-natural-resources-rich land of South Sudan, the Nuba Mountains, and elsewhere, they do not want the indigenous black Africans who live on that land.

Along with SAF troops, Khartoum sent the Popular Defense Forces (PDF), an Arab militia known as the “Al Qaeda of Sudan.”11 The PDF conducted door-to-door searches for SPLA civilian supporters and generally for black African Nuba. They boasted that they were given orders by Khartoum to “sweep away the rubbish” and if they saw a Nuba to “just clean it up.”12 In a June 16, 2011, McClatchy news story, fleeing aid workers “told harrowing tales of Nuba tribesmen being gunned down in the streets ... and of women and children seeking refuge in the Nuba Mountains.” One aid worker said those fleeing said, “Whenever they see you are a black person, they kill you.”13 Frantic messages came from the Nuba Mountains that “the Khartoum regime is starting another genocide” and the only way to stop it is with “direct military intervention.” But when asked on June 11, 2011, by PBS A child injured during the bombing of Kurche on June 26, 2011.

News Hour’s Margaret Warner if ethnic cleansing was occurring, Princeton Lyman, President Obama’s Sudan special envoy, replied that he didn‘t “think the North is capable of dislodging large numbers of people on an ethnic basis from the Nuba Mountains” and he was “not sure that’s the objective of the government, though local commanders may have a different point of view.”

When Warner inquired whether Lyman believed atrocities were being committed by the North Sudanese forces against civilians, he replied that they “certainly had reports,” but since the US had no presence there, they were not able to “investigate it fully.” He added that there were “reports from the other side, also.” Lyman assured Warner that they were “working with the parties” and that “Secretary Clinton had called the chief negotiator for the Sudan government to urge him to reach an agreement on a cessation of hostilities.”

“But the bottom line is, it is just talk,” Warner summarized.14 While the State Department talked, Khartoum acted swiftly, killing thousands. With every new email report of atrocities from NGOs on the ground, Christian and secular advocacy organizations, human rights

...For over 12 months other “Days of Bleeding” have been repeated across Nuba Mountain towns and villages... groups, members of the US Congress, and other Sudan advocates demanded intervention. The State Department expressed “deep concern” but maintained that “there was not enough information” to consider action.15 On June 23, 2011, the Associated Press leaked16 an “internal use only” UN memo reporting that thousands of displaced Nuba in Kadugli had been directed to a big stadium by Sudanese National Security Service agents posing as Red Crescent workers. They had been threatened with forced removal from the UN camp if they did not go to the stadium to hear an address by new governor Haroun. The report ended there, but five days later another AP story17 reported, “The United Nations … was concerned about the fate of 7,000 Sudanese civilians last seen being forced by authorities to leave the protection of a UN compound in the tense border region between the North and South." A few weeks later, Satellite Sentinel Project, cofounded by actor George Clooney and Sudan activist John Prendergast, provided images of some eight mass grave sites in and around Kadugli.18 Although the NCP killed both Christian and Muslim Nuba, numerous eyewitnesses declared that from the war’s start “churches and pastors were directly targeted.” The bishop of the Episcopal Church of Sudan’s Kadugli and Nuba Mountains Diocese may be alive today only because of his medical problems. The Rt. Rev. Andudu Adam Elnail Kuku was in the United States for treatment when on June 7, 2011, armed forces in Kadugli broke into pastors’ houses, “looting or burning all the valuables inside,” according to a June 11, 2011, press release from the All Africa Conference of Churches.19 Looking for clergy, and especially for Bishop Andudu, they

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destroyed the Episcopal Church guesthouse, the diocesan headquarters, Christ Church Cathedral, and the bishop’s house.

Andudu testified20 before the US House of Representatives Africa Subcommittee in August 2011 that at that time “armed men went house to house, searching for me, calling my name.” The bishop’s chaplain who witnessed the search escaped through a window but was captured and beaten. Andudu’s wife and five children are safe in Uganda, but many other Nuba Christians have been killed.

And since the NCP has put a price on his head, Andudu has been granted asylum in the US where he is working tirelessly for his people with American Sudan advocates.

Bombing and starving: then and now In addition to conducting a ground campaign, the SAF resurrected old flight plans used the first time that the Sudan government declared jihad against the Nuba.21 Anti-personnel bombs—barrels stuffed with ball bearings and other deadly projectiles and dropped from converted Russian Antonov cargo planes, MiG fighter jets, and helicopter gunships—terrorize communities and are used to flush civilians out from hiding so they can be killed. They have caused displacement and prevented the Nuba from planting and/or harvesting crops. More than 40,000 have fled to Yida and other refugee camps in South Sudan to escape the bombs, but Sudan has also violated international boundaries by bombing refugee camps in the Republic of South Sudan.

One of Andudu’s senior priests sent out photographs of a June 2011 bombing in the Kurche marketplace that killed 16 and wounded 21.22 The priest called it “The Sunday of Bleeding,” the first of many bombings to occur in that town. Among the victims were two sisters; one was decapitated, and the other died from her wounds at a clinic. Another victim was a young father who was sheared in half by shrapnel. The priest’s own brother and sister-in-law were killed, leaving behind three children.

For over 12 months other “Days of Bleeding” have been repeated across Nuba Mountain towns and villages, such as Al Hamra, Miri, Lagawa, Um Dorain, Talodi, Dilling, Heiban, and many others. Sudan expert Eric Reeves has documented over 230 aerial bombardments or rocket attacks against Southern Kordofan/Nuba Mountains between June 2011 and June 2012.23 In a desperate attempt to escape the bombing, some 500,000 Nuba have fled to mountain caves where they are at imminent risk of death

from disease, starvation, and dehydration, cut off from all aid by Khartoum.

Bishop Andudu pleads with churches around the world to pray and fast for the Nuba. “Once again we are facing the nightmare of genocide of our people in a final attempt to erase our culture and society from the face of the earth,” he says. “It is not a war between armies that is being fought in our land, but the utter destruction of our way of life and our history, as demonstrated by the genocide of our neighbors and relatives in Darfur,” he explains. “This is a war of domination and eradication; at its core it is a war of terror by the government of Sudan against their people,” the bishop declares.24 Some warn that “this could become another Darfur,” but in reality Darfur was another Nuba Mountains. For many, memories of the first Nuba genocide during Sudan’s civil war are fresh. Men from the Nuba Mountains, as well as Blue Nile State and elsewhere, fought alongside Southerners in the jihad against South Sudan from 1983 to 2005. Because of this, Khartoum set out to purge the region. Nuba Muslims were labeled “apostate” in an April 1993 government-sponsored fatwa that proclaimed, “An insurgent who was previously a Moslem is now an apostate; and a non-Moslem is a non-believer standing as a bulwark against the spread of Islam, and Islam has granted the freedom of killing both of them.”25 The Nuba genocide raged from 1993 until 2002 when the first US Sudan special envoy, former Senator John Danforth, brokered a ceasefire.

During those years, the Nuba population was reduced by over 50 percent.

Above: Bombs dropped on villages kill the Nuba indiscriminately.

Left: By any standard, the Nuba are incredibly resilient, but the events of this last year have them near breaking point as starving refugees in their own land.

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Top and bottom right: Children slain in the bombing of Kurche on June 26, 2011. “Do the world and our administration still want to deal diplomatically with the bloody racist terrorists of Khartoum?” wrote the Nuba citizen who took the photos.

“Please circulate these pictures!”

Bottom left: Families flee their villages and seek shelter in caves.

Tens of thousands were killed outright. Others were victims of slave raids or “peace camps,” where receiving food was contingent upon conversion to Islam. Still others starved through the banning of international relief flights.26 Soon after war began in 2011, Bashir recalled the Nuba “rebellion” in a speech in Kadugli, now an NCP garrison. “If the people here refuse to honor the results of the election, then we will force them back into the mountains and prevent them from having food just as we did before,” he threatened.27 And now people have indeed been forced from their homes and up into the mountain caves by bombing and other acts of war. Stored food has been depleted and those in the caves have nothing to eat except leaves and insects, with little access to drinking water.28 Aid is available over the border in the Republic of South Sudan, but the NCP regime forbids cross-border aid. Courageous NGOs and Christian organizations have defied the ban as much as possible to bring in aid, but they can’t take care of half a million people. Now Sudan is well into the rainy season, making it almost impossible to deliver aid to the mountains.

The current crisis has united Sudan advocates on the need to stop the NCP regime’s attacks on civilians and the blockade of humanitarian aid. US advocacy groups include Christian, Jewish, and secular organizations and coalitions, large and small. Each brings its own strengths to the table—some have excellent contacts with Sudanese on the ground and in the Diaspora, some are media strategists and involve individuals with high name recognition, and some are mobilizers of those who will pray. Some

focus on humanitarian aid, some on political advocacy, some on research and reporting, and some are willing to go beyond what is politically correct or expedient to push for what is necessary. For instance, in a Washington Times opinion piece in April, Samaritan’s Purse President Franklin Graham urged the US to bomb Sudan’s airstrips. “I certainly am not asking the president to kill anyone, just to break up some concrete to prevent the bombers from taking off,” Graham said. “I think that by destroying those runways, we can force Mr. Bashir to the negotiating table.”29 Sudan advocates and some members of Congress have pointed out that although the US and other governments sided with Egyptian and Libyan demonstrators and rebels to bring down tyrants, none is willing to prevent the starvation of half a million Nuba by pushing Khartoum for uncompromised humanitarian access to those in the caves. Instead, in every negotiation, the war criminal NCP government is permitted to dictate its terms. They will accept food but insist that only they deliver it. They will allow access to government-controlled areas, but not to “rebel-held” areas where the actual starvation is taking place. Why would the very regime that has deliberately orchestrated starvation and genocide allow preventative measures to counter them?

“Rebels” and moral equivalence The US State Department may believe that negotiating a “cessation of hostilities” is the solution, but Brad Phillips of the Persecution Project Foundation (PPF), working in Sudan since 1997, declares that the only reason the Nuba have not already been exterminated by Khartoum is that the SPLA-N “has clearly taken the fight to the NCP.” Phillips says that “after 500,000 dead and years of broken promises, marginalization, and persecution, the Nuba people have had enough.”30 In

“Once

again

we are facing the nightmare of genocide of our people in a final attempt to erase our culture

and

society from the face of the earth.”

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Act for Sudan (ActforSudan.org) is probably the newest of the Sudan advocates, but it is an alliance of over 60 seasoned Sudan activist/human rights organizations. It was launched in the fall of 2011 to “advocate for what is necessary, rather than what is politically correct or expedient” and features ongoing social media and other campaigns. R Church Alliance for a New Sudan (CANS) (TheIRD.org/ Sudan), partnering with the Sudanese Church since 1994, mobilizes church members to press for a coherent US foreign policy response to Sudan, including appropriate intervention and support for democracy in Southern Sudan, leading to a just peace and religious freedom for all of Sudan. + The Enough Project (EnoughProject.org) fights to end genocide and crimes against humanity by obtaining facts on the ground, using rigorous analysis to determine the most sustainable solutions, influencing political leaders to adopt their proposals, and mobilizing the American public to demand change. Enough partners with the Satellite Sentinel Project (SatSentinel.org), which features compelling video witness of the war crimes in the Nuba Mountains, where cameras are banned. R Help Nuba (HelpNuba.net) promotes awareness of the crisis in the Nuba Mountains and of the situation in Darfur and in South Sudan. It is led by members of the Nuba Mountain, Darfur, and South Sudanese communities in the United States and around the world, along with American activists.

Joining Our Voices Ministries (JoiningOurVoices.com) rallies efforts to end the genocide in the Nuba Mountains. It calls attention to the Nuba church, recording and documenting the indigenous songs and worship of Christians in the Nuba Mountains and throughout Sudan/South Sudan to archive and preserve their cultural expressions of worship. + Nuba Christian Family Mission (NCFM) (georgetuto@ hotmail.com)—George Kouri Tuto, a Nuba from the Moro tribe, is president and founder of Nuba Christian Family Mission, which works to provide humanitarian aid to the people of the Nuba Mountains, to support the Diocese of Kadugli, and to visit the region and produce fact-finding reports. +

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+ GET INVOLVED

Below is a sampling of humanitarian and/or advocacy organizations and individuals for the Nuba Mountains/South Kordofan region of Sudan. Many of the humanitarian organizations have felt compelled over the years to also be involved in advocacy. Self-identified Christian organizations are marked +. All of them feature resources to better understand the issues involved; those that offer the best action ideas have a R.

congressional testimony Phillips criticized the US and other governments for not protecting the Nuba. If it were not for the SPLA-N, “led by their inspirational leader, Abdelaziz Adam Al Hilu, we would be witnessing Rwandan-style genocide,” he blazed.31 Like David against Goliath, the SPLA-N has caused the NCP humiliating military defeats even though only the Sudan government has air power. The SPLA-N now controls 90 percent of the countryside while the SAF are “in garrisons ... dug in like rats inside their trenches,” according to Al Hilu.32 The SPLA-N is able to fight against the larger, betterequipped army, “thanks to Bashir [and] SAF,” Al Hilu reveals.

Often SAF troops flee, abandoning tanks, land cruisers, shells, rockets, and other weapons, so “it is Bashir who is supplying us,” Al Hilu says. “They bring everything and leave it for us!”

SAF troops also defect frequently to the SPLA-N. Speaking to Global Post journalist Tristan McConnell recently, Al Hilu admitted that when they run across an unfamiliar weapon, they look for ex-SAF soldiers to train them.33 The Muslim Al Hilu agrees with his Christian friend Bishop Andudu that this is a war of domination over Sudan’s marginalized peoples. “Khartoum doesn’t want to recognize the diversity in the country,” he told Tristan McConnell. The NCP regime is “going for a monolithic type of state, based on only two parameters, that is Arabism and Islam.”34 Al Hilu believes in religious freedom for all and a secular democracy, the “New Sudan” vision of his late friend, SPLA leader Dr. John Garang.35 In November 2011 the SPLA-N united with opposition movements of Sudan’s other marginalized people groups (the 87 percent of Sudan’s population who are black Africans, treated as second-class citizens by Khartoum’s ruling Arab elite) as the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF).36 Al Hilu is the chief of the Joint Military Command. Others in leadership include a number of Darfurian rebel leaders and former Blue Nile State Governor Malik Agar. In September 2011, Khartoum began another war, this time against Blue Nile State, and ousted Agar.37 The SRF also includes the Beja Congress of Eastern Sudan38 and the Nubians from the far north39—other ancient, indigenous people groups marginalized and oppressed by the regime.

Neither the US nor NATO has offered the SPLA-N the support they offered Egyptian and Libyan protestors, even though Khartoum could eradicate the Nuba and coordination between Sudan’s marginalized peoples and some young pro-democracy Arab Sudanese in the north is now a viable alternative to the regime. Instead, the SPLA-N and NCP are portrayed as morally equivalent by such statements as “Both sides must end the current violence and allow immediate humanitarian access to desperate people.”40 A mere one week after demonstrations started in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, President Obama urged President Hosni Mubarak to step down.41 Libya’s uprising began February 17, 2011, and by February 26, the UN Security Council condemned Gadhafi’s crackdown on the rebels as a violation of international law.42 By March 17, the UN created the kind of no-fly

Nuba Reports (NubaReports.org) provides onthe-ground coverage of the situation in the Nuba Mountains by citizen journalists who call themselves “Eyes and Ears Nuba.” They provide credible, compelling reportage about the fighting in the Nuba Mountains, where thousands now hide in caves from Sudan Armed Forces.

Sitting out an aerial attack in the Nuba Mountains.

zone for which the Nuba have been pleading for a year.43 Unlike the SPLA-N, which has taken on Khartoum by itself, Libya’s “freedom fighters” needed the US and NATO to fight their battles for them.

Asked if the US hopes that the Arab Spring will spread to Sudan, Special Envoy Lyman said, “Frankly, we do not want to see the ouster of the [Sudanese] regime, nor regime change. We want to see the regime carrying out reform via constitutional democratic measures.”44 The US continues to expect success from negotiations, incentives, and empty warnings, but these have never brought success in the past. Khartoum uses these delays and distractions to its own advantage, committing serial genocide with impunity. Successive US administrations have never seemed to understand the truth of late SPLA leader Garang’s claim that the NCP government was “too deformed to reform.”45 The double standard is breathtaking to Sudan activists, particularly now that people like the Muslim Brotherhood have gained substantial power in Egypt and Islamists have gained significant influence in Libya. Lord David Alton, a member of the British Parliament and a tremendous advocate for human rights in Sudan, recently compared his government’s action against Libya and strong statements about Syria with the way it was “turning a blind eye” to Sudan. In a July 8, 2012, story in The Independent, Alton asked, “Why is a life in Africa worth less than a life in any other country?"46 If the US and other governments will not support the SPLA-N and the SRF, they should at least not stand in the way of their courageous and sacrificial fight for freedom. Al Hilu observed that the Sudan Army is very weak and that they seem to have little will to fight. So journalist Nicholas Kristof wants to know why the Obama administration “consistently tried to restrain the rebel force.”47 In his New York Times column, Kristof said that the SPLA-N wants to liberate Kadugli from NCP regime control but Washington is discouraging them. Al Hilu, he said, “seemed mystified that American officials try to shield a genocidal government whose army is, he thinks, crumbling.” Stating that the international community has a “problem with memory,” the commander marveled that this is the same Bashir “who introduced Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda to the world.” He said what Sudan advocates have observed all along: “In this conflict between the Nuba and the center [Khartoum] we are not allowed to fight freely, there is intervention always … Always there is pressure on the South, on the Nuba, on the marginalized people, the poor people … They make us go to the table to talk but there is no action.”48 Some argue that the US is concerned that regime change could usher in an even worse regime. In any event it is difficult to conceive of anything worse for the people or for global security than Bashir and the NCP regime. Admittedly, there are Islamist hardliners and throwbacks such as former Minister of Justice Hassan al Turabi49 and former President Sadiq

Operation Broken Silence (OperationBrokenSilence.org) works to abolish mass atrocities and modern slavery. They recently returned from a factfinding mission to South Sudan and the Nuba Mountains and are now working to publicize the “shocking consequences” of the genocide being committed against the Nuba people.

Persecution Project Foundation (PersecutionProject.org) provides active compassion for the persecuted, bringing crisis relief and spiritual hope to victims of civil war, genocide, and religious persecution. They have focused on the Nuba Mountains with both humanitarian relief and advocacy since the war began (see SavetheNuba.com). The Persecution Project offers lots of effective ways to get involved, according to your gifting (leader, implementer, artist, connector, specialist, prayer warrior, etc). + R Samaritan’s Purse (SamaritansPurse.org) is a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization that provides spiritual and physical aid. They are bringing food, medical care, wells, sanitation, shelters, and other support to Nuba that have fled over the border to Yida and Doro refugee camps in South Sudan. + United to End Genocide (UEG) (EndGenocide. org) is a merger of Save Darfur Coalition and Genocide Intervention Network. It aims to prevent and end genocide and mass atrocities worldwide, make human rights and genocide prevention core values in US foreign policy, ensure justice for victims, and stop the perpetration of genocide or mass atrocities.

Voices for Sudan (VoicesforSudan.org) is a US-based coalition of Sudanese-led organizations dedicated to resolving the humanitarian crisis in Sudan and South Sudan and establishing a Sudan at peace with itself and its neighbors, where human rights are protected by the government and where economic development can flourish.

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al-Mahdi50 waiting in the wings. Laughably, these two, and others like them who have always plotted the Islamization of Sudan and all of Africa, now clamor for “regime change.” If given the chance, they would use the SPLA-N and the SRF’s fight for freedom to regain power. Regime change that puts one of them in leadership again would change nothing for the people of Sudan.

How will the conflict end?

When asked how the conflict will end, Al Hilu stated, “We are working for regime change, for complete transformation, for writing a new constitution, a democratic constitution that recognizes diversity, that accepts the liberal values of justice, equality, individualism. We want to achieve lasting peace and justice in this country.”51 Most (not all) Sudan advocates and members of Congress who care about Sudan would stop short of calling publicly for it, but in their heart of hearts it is exactly this kind of regime change for which they hope and pray. Such an ending to the conflict is, they know, the desire of the Nuba, of all Sudan’s marginalized people, and of most of Sudan. But it appears to be diametrically opposed to the wishes of the US government.

Advocates today have two important tasks. First, we must expose the propensity that would cast the persecutors and the persecuted—the genocidal Sudanese regime and the “rebels” who are fighting back against the genocide—as morally equivalent. Second, we must add our voices to increase international pressure on the regime. Some Christians will push for Western military intervention while others will push for spiritual warfare against the evil regime, but we can all agree to contact our leg-

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Eyes and Ears of God is a nonprofit that seeks to put video cameras in the hands of as many Nuba people as possible so that they can record the atrocities committed against them and put a face on their tragic circumstances.

Eyes and Ears of God was founded in 2006 by Tomo Kriznar, a human rights activist from Slovenia who has been traveling to Sudan since 1979. The photos in this feature were supplied by Kriznar and some of the more than 600 courageous Sudanese volunteers who—in the belief that cameras, computers, and satellite modems are more potent weapons than Kalashnikovs—provide regular footage that gives the International Criminal Court in the Hague proof of the genocide taking place in Sudan.

“Thank you for publishing these photos,” Kriznar told PRISM. “They express not only suffering but also the Nuba people’s endless strength, optimism, faith, and love. I have never encountered a more inspiring culture.

Nowhere do I feel God more than in the Nuba Mountains. Nowhere do I get more energy for my own struggles in life. Everybody who comes to Nuba notices that, but I can see that European and American decision makers are not aware of it.

Please share these photos widely. Time is running out for the Nuba people. If we protect them, everybody will benefit.”

Please go to TomoKriznar.com to learn more and to watch the featurelength documentary Eyes and Ears of God—Video Surveillance of Sudan.

islators in Washington, DC, to express our outrage over what is happening. We can demand that our leaders call on Sudan President Omar al-Bashir to halt the campaign of violence and to establish a humanitarian corridor in the Nuba Mountains so that aid can be delivered. We must let the Nuba people know that they are not forgotten.

As the Kurche Youth Choir mentioned at the beginning of this article sang, “Brothers, the bad things that were happening, God has raised his hand to stop.”

Humanly speaking, in spite of passionate advocates and valiant warriors, obstacles to peace and freedom seem insurmountable this time around. But the Nuba have faith that God will once again raise his hand to stop the evil occurring in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan.

(Editor’s note: Due to space limitations, the endnotes for this article have been posted at PRISMmagazine.org/endnotes.)

Faith J. H. McDonnell directs the Religious Liberty Program and Church Alliance for a New Sudan of the Washington, DC-based Institute on Religion and Democracy and is the author of Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children (Chosen Books, 2007). She has been involved in advocacy for Sudan since 1994.