Bombing of Civilians in Sudan Seen as Ethnic, Religious ‘Cleansing’

Two children killed.

Thousands of Nuba Mountain civilians have taken refuge from government bombing in caves. (Diocese of El Obeid photo)

Thousands of Nuba Mountain civilians have taken refuge from government bombing in caves. (Diocese of El Obeid photo)

JUBA, South Sudan (Morning Star News) – In what Christians see as a government effort to rid the country of Christianity and ethnic Nuba people, the Sudanese Air Force has stepped up bombings of civilians in South Kordofan in the past two months, including an attack on Nov. 17 that killed two children.

Sudan dropped two bombs on the predominantly Christian village of Tanasa, where there is no rebel military presence, killing 10-year-old Alnur Tromba Altijani and Tia Nihaya, 7, according to a press statement from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM/N). The rebel claim was not independently verified.

In the same attack on Tanasa, south of the state capital of Kadugli, according to the SPLM/N, 10-year-old Mubarak Shamsun Mashru lost his left hand, and Fatoma Ali, 45, was also wounded.

Five houses belonging to four people – Kafi Nimir, Yohanna Kuku Soleiman, Adam Kuku and Daniel Kuku, all Christian names according to a source – were destroyed. The houses of three other civilians were seriously damaged, according to the SPLM-N. In the same attack, two other bombs hit Buram town, damaging farms.

Since April 2012 Sudan has dropped 1,250 bombs on civilians in South Kordofan state, according to online news portal Nuba Reports, run by aid worker Ryan Boyette, who remained in South Kordofan after his Christian humanitarian organization was forced to evacuate after military conflict escalated in 2011.

Two civilians were killed and 12 seriously wounded on March 19 when government planes dropped bombs on them (see Morning Star News, March 27).

Since South Sudan split from Sudan in a 2011 referendum, Nuba people in Sudan’s South Kordofan state believe the government’s goal of quashing SPLM-N rebels is also meant to rid the area of non-Arabs and Christianity.

Thousands of civilians have reportedly taken refuge in Nuba Mountain caves in South Kordofan, which borders South Sudan. The Nuba people have longstanding complaints against Khartoum – including neglect, oppression and forced conversions to Islam in a 1990s jihad – but as Sudanese citizens on the northern side of the border, they were never given the option of secession in the 2005 peace pact between northern and southern Sudan.

The rebels in the Nuba Mountains were formerly involved with the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) forces fighting Khartoum before the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). The SPLA’s political arm, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), now governs South Sudan, and a border conflict has kept the two Sudans on the verge of another full-scale war since June 2011. The growing rebel movement in the Nuba Mountains has sparked tensions, and Sudan reportedly bombed civilians in the South Sudan state of North Bahr El Ghazal on Nov. 20-22, 2012, killing seven.

Fighting between Sudan and South Sudan broke out in June 2011, when Khartoum forcefully attempted to disarm the SPLA-N in South Kordofan by force rather than awaiting a process of disarmament as called for in the CPA. When the CPA was signed in 2005, the people of South Kordofan were to vote on whether to join the north or the south, but the state governor suspended the process.

In a non-binding referendum in late October, 99.9 percent of the people of the Abyei Area in South Kordofan voted to become part of South Sudan.

Nuba Mountain Christians increasingly feel they are being driven into South Sudan, especially as Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has said post-secession Sudan will adhere more exclusively to Islam and Arabic culture.

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