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Bishop Mvume Dandala.
PICTURE: Christian World Service/NCCA.
Front
image: A Sudanese refugee boy cries. PICTURE: Courtesy of
CARE Australia.
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20th
August, 2004
NICHOLAS KERR and DAVID ADAMS
Australian peace keepers would be welcome Sudan’s Darfur region
but only if the Australian Government talks with the African Union
first, according to one of Africa’s top church leaders.
Bishop Mvume Dandala, general secretary of the All African Council
of Churches, said African churches fully supported the African Union’s
moves to send peace keeping forces to Darfur.
Speaking in an interview in mid-August before a formal meeting with
an Australian National Council of Churches/Christian World Service
delegation in Nairobi, Kenya, Bishop Dandala said the African Union’s
decision to send in peace keepers was a crucial one.
“We as churches are absolutely dismayed that the Government
of Sudan does not want to have this peace keeping force,”
he told the Australian delegation which was led by the chair of
Christian World Service, Reverend Gregor Henderson.
“If people massacre each other, you can’t just stand
on the periphery and shout at them, ‘Please stop!’ There
has to be a way to step in.”
But the bishop warned that if Australia wanted to send in a force,
there would first need to be a dialogue with the African Union.
“The world is being threatened by a situation where powerful
countries seem to believe they have a right to act unilaterally,”
he said.
“This is one of the greatest sensibilities that nations must
develop in dealing with one another.”
The first group of African Union peacekeepers left for Sudan on
13th August, the same day Bishop Dandala gave his interview. The
previous day, Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan el-Bashir, had
accused Western nations of interfering in Western Darfur to try
to exploit Sudan’s gold and oil resources.
In what has been declared the world’s worst humanitarian crisis
at present, at least 50,000 people have been killed as a result
of the strife which has gripped the western Darfur region of the
African nation over the past year.
Human rights groups say that despite government promises to end
the violence, not only are the pro-government Arab Janjaweed militias
continuing to kill, rape and loot in the region but instead of being
disarmed many are simply being absorbed into security forces.
‘Child
slavery must be stopped’
A representative of the All African Council of Churches
has called for and end to child slavery in Sudan.
“Slavery is a real issue,” Bishop Mvume Dandala,
general secretary of the council, told an Australian delegation
earlier this month. “This is something the world should
be taking very, very seriously.”
Bishop Dandala said that when he visited Sudan recently
he met a group of women through the Christian Council of
Sudan.
“They raised two major concerns,” he said. “The
first was their anguish that in some of their communities,
particularly in the south, their children were being abducted
to work as slaves.
“They put together a group to identify the underground
market for children. They claimed they had more than 10,000
names in their list of children who had disappeared.
“The second was that they tried to mobilise funds
to rescue the children – but their overseas ecumenical
partners reacted negatively when they heard the women were
actually buying back some of the children.
“The partners said their money was being used to encourage
the slave market. That was a great disappointment to the
women. Their anguish was that, while they had been able
to salvage at least 200 children from slavery, the withdrawal
of these resources left them completely helpless.”
Bishop Dandala said it would be wrong to say children must
not be rescued until the system under which they were abducted
is changed.
“In the same way you can’t say it’s wrong
to give people charity until you’re resolved the bigger
economic problems that cause hunger. By the same token,
you can’t say that charity’s enough. Both approaches
are needed.”
Bishop Dandala has also called for churches and the world
ecumenical community to speak out against the abduction
of children to be used as child soldiers.
“The abduction of children and turning them into child
soldiers in northern Uganda by the Lord’s Resistance
Army must be condemned outright,” he said. “But
we would be cheating ourselves if we said it was happening
only in that area.
“In most of the wars being fought on this continent,
children are being used. They’re being turned into
killing machines...Girls are being taken, raped –
and then used as soldiers. This is quite unacceptable. We
must all raise our voices together against this.”.
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As many as 1.2 million people have left their homes as a result
of the violence with many of them now encamped in refugee camps
in border regions. There are a further 200,000 refugees in Chad.
An estimated two million people at risk of disease and starvation
as a result of the violence.
Reports from the African Union peacekeepers this week have suggested
that the violence has even reached the refugee camps with the Kalma
camp looted and people living within it harrassed by the Sudanese
military last week.
Bishop Dandala told members of the Australian delegation that the
Christian Church must support the call for the Sudan Government
to rein in the militias and called for the militias to be demobilised.
“I don’t believe the church can ever be satisfied with
the argument that the government has no control and hasn’t
sent these people to do the killing,” he said.
“If you’re a government, you’re responsible for
the welfare of the people. The people of Darfur merit the care and
attention of their government. If the militias continue the massacre
the government cannot excuse itself. That is a clear position that
the church takes.
“The government of Sudan should welcome the decision to send
in peace keeping forces, particularly if they continue to argue
that the militia that are killing people aren’t part of their
own military arrangements.”
Calling for the African Union’s peace-keeping force to be
actively involved in resettling villages and assisting with humanitarian
needs, he said the African Church was pressing for “Africans
to stand on their own two feet”.
“That doesn’t mean that we don’t want people to
come and hold hands with us in solidarity,” he said. “What
we object to is the intervention that comes in a messianic manner
and, in the process, leaves the African people themselves with their
hands tied as if they can do nothing by themselves.
”We don’t want people to come in and say, ‘We
know what’s best for you’.”
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SUDAN: AFRICAN CHURCHES CALL FOR AN END TO THE KILLING