Sudan: The Passion of the Present

Zimbabwe town resorts to ox-drawn carts to remove garbage / Rural communities ditch hallowed traditions to keep up with hard times

Two recent ZimOnline stories:

"Zimbabwe town resorts to ox-drawn carts to remove garbage"...

Zimbabwe was this week thrown back into the dark ages when authorities in the town of Shamva north-east of Harare started removing garbage using donkey and ox-drawn carts as a crunch fuel crisis continues to bite.

Zimbabwe has experienced intermittent fuel shortages for the past six years, precipitated by the country’s worst economic crisis, [which] has spawned critical shortages of foreign currency needed to pay for oil imports.

The chief executive officer of Shamva town council, Sydney Chiwara, said yesterday [Friday] fuel shortages had forced authorities to suspend the use of tractors and trucks used to remove garbage from the town’s Nyaradzo residential suburb.

Chiwara said the latest move was the only available option for the council as it battles to avert a health disaster.

“We have been having a problem of diesel and this is a stop-gap measure which we have taken to prevent a health hazard,” he told ZimOnline by phone from the district council about 90km from the capital, Harare.

“We are hoping that we will get diesel soon but in the meantime the donkey and ox-drawn cart have come in handy. We do not have any other choice.”

Donkey and ox-drawn cart owners in the district have become instant millionaires as the council pays up to keep the garbage off the street. But residents of Nyaradzo complained on state television on Thursday that the new transport system had its own shortcomings, such as donkey and cattle dung strewn all over the suburb.

Fuel shortages have resulted in urban suburbs going for weeks with uncollected garbage, which health experts say will result in a serious health crisis if it continues into the rainy season, expected to begin anytime now.

In September, Harare town clerk Nomusa Chideya told a parliamentary portfolio committee that the city had been forced to purchase fuel on the black market after failing to get allocation from the government.

Although other officials have not publicly commented on where they are getting fuel, most are getting it from the black market at no less than $100 000 a litre to keep their vehicle fleet on the road.

But Shamva has become the first council in the country to improvise using donkey and ox-drawn carts to remove garbage, something that may have been unthinkable to many Zimbabweans.

"Rural communities ditch hallowed traditions to keep up with hard times"...

Visiting Bocha rural district, more than 200km south-east of Harare, one would be forgiven for thinking that mourners at a funeral wake in one of the villages here are on some kind of competition to see who among them cooks the best.   

Soon after the burial of James Mushipe, the mourners troop back to the home of the deceased to have lunch. Each mourner takes out a packet of food that they have brought along. But this is no competition to see who prepares the best food. Instead this is testimony of hunger stalking Zimbabwe.

“It's a sign of the times,” said Norman, the sombre-faced elder brother to the late Mushipe. "This is a new tradition brought about by increasing hunger and shortage of food. So, people are now required to bring their own food whenever they attend funerals," he added.

Bring-your-own-bottle or -food parties are as common in Zimbabwe as everywhere else. But the long-held tradition was that at funerals the family of the deceased must fend for relatives and friends gathered to comfort and help them through their proverbial moment of need.

The community would chip in with contributions of small portions of food, traditional beer or even utensils to be used to cook and serve food to the mourners but it remained the responsibility of the deceased’s family to feed mourners.

Not anymore, as Zimbabwe grapples a severe economic recession that set in after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) withdrew financial assistance in 1999 and gathered momentum after President Robert Mugabe launched his controversial farm seizure programme a year later.

Mugabe’s chaotic and often violent seizure of productive land from white farmers for redistribution to landless blacks destabilised the mainstay agricultural sector, causing a 60-percent drop in food production.

Zimbabwe, once a regional bread basket, has avoided starvation for the last five years only because international relief groups have chipped in with food handouts. And more than one million tonnes of food aid are urgently required or an estimated third of the country’s 12 million people could starve between now and the next harvests that begin around March/April 2006, according to World Food Programme (WFP) figures.    

But it is not only food that is in critical short supply. Fuel, electricity, essential medical drugs and just about every other basic survival commodity is in critical short supply, this at a time a burgeoning HIV/AIDS crisis is ravaging the country, killing at least 3 000 people every week.
 
Philemon Mugano, a member of the Bocha rural district council, describes how the worsening crisis has forced even this most conservative community here to review tradition in order to keep with the hard times.

He said: "People are dying every day because of HIV/AIDS. Coupled with the fact that virtually everyone here is starving with no form of food support either from the government or (international) donors, it had become a nightmare for bereaving families to feed all the mourners.

“Hence we now require everyone to bring their own meal provisions for the duration of the bereavement."

Mugabe, who until just before last March’s disputed parliamentary election, denied Zimbabwe faced food shortages, has barred international food aid groups from assisting starving people accusing them of using food aid to try and win support for the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party.

The WFP and other non-governmental organisations are allowed to feed only special groups such as orphans, people living with HIV/AIDS and the elderly.  Unconfirmed reports suggest Mugabe will only open up the country to internal food agencies after a senate election scheduled for November 26.

But Mugano said many in his area could not wait until end of next month before they can get food aid, adding that the “Bring-your-on-food” funeral wakes should be enough evidence of how desperate the situation had become.

"It might seem like a joke to some, when we say there is hunger here,” the councillor said. He added: “But the truth my brother is that we have reached a point beyond which there could be total disaster. For example, in my ward alone I have in the last month witnessed at least three deaths because of hunger-related illnesses.”

Former University of Zimbabwe vice-chancellor and leading social scientist Gordon Chavhunduka, concurred with the councillor, saying only the most desperate of situations could see people requiring mourners to carry along their own food.

He said: “Circumstances, such as the one Zimbabwe finds itself in, force many to abandon cultural norms for survival. All this is happening because of starvation even if our political leaders don’t want to take necessary steps to ensure people are assisted with food.”

Defending his government’s decision to bar food agencies, Mugabe told journalists on the sidelines of the United Nations summit last month that no one was starving in Zimbabwe saying the country had heaps of potatoes and rice which people could turn to but only that they did not prefer them.

Asked to comment on Mugabe’s rice and potato claim, 57-year-old Tsitsi Katuzure would not in the first place believe the President could have said such a thing. She said: “You people are lying against our President because only a mad man can claim that we are starving here simply because we think potatoes and rice do not taste nice.”

Amid soaring Congo peaks, UN tries to banish rebels

From Reuters...

U.N. and Congolese troops opened fire on rebel bases in a national park on Monday to flush out fighters believed to be holed up in its mountains and jungles a month after a deadline for their pull-out expired.

U.N. attack helicopters whirred overhead as armoured personnel carriers ploughed through forests in Virunga National Park in Democratic Republic of Congo at the start of a five-day offensive that prompted at least 15 rebels to surrender.

Troops set fire to huts in several apparently deserted rebel camps dotted around the park, a World Heritage Site that is a diverse landscape of swamp, steppe, savannah, lava plains and soaring mountain peaks roamed by endangered gorillas.

"This operation aims at securing Virunga park, which has been identified as a logistical and training base for the militias, especially the Rwandan rebels," said Lt. Col Mayank Awasthi, a spokesman for the U.N. mission in DRC.

Awasthi said 500 U.N. troops and 2,000 Congolese soldiers were involved in the joint operation targeting about 5,000 Rwandan Hutu rebels and 3,000 Congolese Mai Mai militiamen whom experts estimate have pitched camp in Virunga park.

About 1,000 Ugandan rebels are also believed by regional security officials to be in the region.

A Reuters reporter travelling with the troops saw two Congolese Mai Mai fighters, barefoot and wide-eyed with fear, emerge from thick jungle escorted by U.N. troops.

"I was tired of the bush. Life in the jungle is unbearable," Sammy Mumbili told Reuters, saying he wanted to be integrated into Congo's army.

Rebel fighters in the park had pledged to leave Congo by Sept. 30 under an agreement reached in August between Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda.

However, very few of the foreign insurgents had returned home before the deadline, ignoring a barrage of appeals and threats from all three governments and the United Nations.

The Rwandan Hutu rebels fled to Congo after helping to carry out the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which 800,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed.

'TIRED OF THE BUSH'

Citing the presence of rebels opposing their governments, Rwanda and Uganda have invaded vast neighbour Congo twice in the past decade, sparking two wars. They have later withdrawn under peace deals that have including promises by Kinshasa that the rebels would be dealt with.

Rwanda and Uganda have threatened to send their soldiers back into Congo to disarm the rebels if Kinshasa's fledgling army or U.N. peacekeepers failed to do so.

A contingent of Congolese forces is expected to be deployed to the park to guard it against future rebel infiltration.

However, Richard Sezibera, Rwanda's special envoy to the Great Lakes, said more needed to be done.

"What these people (U.N.) do is to go and tell the rebels to vacate a particular area and when they go (out of the park), the rebels return. That does not make sense," Sezibera told Reuters, speaking before Monday's operation.

"Indicators of success will be measured on how many people and weapons they have captured," he added.

Rwandan officials say the rebels often know about planned U.N. operations months in advance, giving them time to move to a new area before the sweep.

Flying over Virunga, reporters saw that illegal logging had reduced the forest in many areas to charred black pits.

Mediators try to salvage Darfur rebel meeting

The latest from Reuters' Opheera McDoom...

Mediators from Darfur's main rebel group arrived at a unity meeting on Sunday to try and reconcile its two leaders whose differences have stalled African Union-sponsored talks to end the conflict in western Sudan.

The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) began its congress to elect a new leadership amid heavy security on Saturday, after delaying it for many days awaiting the arrival of its President Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur.

Nur refused to attend saying he was not consulted in the preparations of the conference but Secretary-General Minni Arcua Minnawi did come and urged Nur to join him. Personality differences have meant they rarely present a united front.

"We arrived this morning from the headquarters (in the mountainous Jabel Marra region) where we met the president and some field commanders," said Ahmed Abdel Shafiq Yagoub, one of the chief negotiators at peace talks in Nigeria.

"We are worried that this situation now is going to divide the movement," he told Reuters.

Factionalism within the SLA and escalating violence in Darfur has hampered peace efforts, which ended a sixth round on Oct. 20 in the Nigerian capital Abuja with little progress.

Breakaway rebel groups have been blamed for recent violence and the abduction of AU troops in Darfur.

SLA field commanders said they called the congress because they were worried about stand-offs between their leaders.

Minnawi spends much more time in the field, a move which has garnered him more support among the military commanders.

Nur returned to Darfur last week for the first time in more than a year, which observers say was because he feared losing his position on the ground.

NON-ARAB REBELS

Tens of thousands have been killed and more than 2 million forced to flee their homes during a 2-1/2-year-old revolt launched by mostly non-Arab rebels accusing the central government of monopolising wealth and power.

Arab militia known as Janajweed stand accused of a widespread campaign of rape, killing and burning in non-Arab villages in the vast region. Khartoum denies U.S. accusations of genocide but admits arming some militia.

Yagoub said he wanted to stop the conference electing a leadership as planned, because it would split the group, adding a new meeting should take place later with all leaders present.

"There is a real need for such a meeting," he said. "But we want all the people to be involved and this could be a workshop to unite the military first and then later we can have a full meeting."

Thousands of soldiers with weapons from rocket propelled grenades to anti-aircraft guns were present at the conference.

Up to ten thousand civilians and hundreds of delegates took part, some after travelling for days through hostile territory.

Up to nine people lost their lives coming from refugee camps in neighbouring Chad, where some 200,000 Darfuris have fled.

Many people said that if Nur did not come he would not be elected to the leadership. "We had invited the leaders and we are their grass roots and we want them to come," said chief organiser Ibrahim Ahmed Ibrahim.

Ethiopia’s govt warns opposition CUD over strike call

Two wire-service stories:

From AFP, reprinted on Sudan Tribune...

Ethiopia’s main opposition party Sunday called for a general strike next month as part of a series of measures to protest disputed May elections, a move denounced by the government as a threat to law and order.

Amid rising tensions in the capital, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) also urged Ethiopians to boycott the products of government-owned industries, shun state-run media and refuse all contact with security officials beginning on Monday.

It called for a five-day strike starting November 14, and held out the possibility of a mass street demonstration in the capital unless the government addresses its charges of massive ruling party fraud in the May 15 polls.

The appeal was published in Amharic-language newspapers a day after police conducted a large-scale security operation in Addis Ababa and 48 hours after the CUD accused police of beating up some of its members outside its headquarters.

"The government must sit and talk with the CUD and stop the mass arrests," the statement said, vowing to follow through on the steps to force the government to address

"If, after this, the government is not going to discuss the issues we have previously raised, if it is not going to stop the harassment of our people, the CUD will call for a street demonstration and social gathering," it said.

Shortly after the statement was published, about 15 CUD members were detained by police after attending an organizational meeting, according to an AFP correspondent who witnessed the arrests.

The call drew an immediate rebuke from the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which has accused the CUD of fomenting a coup and warned it would take all necessary steps to preserve the peace.

"This is the continuation of the unlawful behavior and acts of the CUD," said Information Minister Berhan Hailu. "The government will not tolerate these actions and it will take whatever measures necessary to keep law and order."

The CUD, which won 109 seats in parliament, is boycotting the legislature.

Earlier this month, lawmakers voted in favor of a ruling party bill to strip boycotting members of parliament of their parliamentary immunity.

Nearly 100 CUD members have been arrested on charges of illegal weapons possession since the beginning of September, according to official statements.

The CUD alleges that authorities have rounded up huge numbers of its supporters and killed six of them and on Friday accused the police of beating up and detaining about 20 members, including elected members of parliament, outside its main office.

On Saturday, hundreds of security forces deployed throughout the capital stopping most traffic and inspecting identity cards, according to witnesses, including an AFP correspondent.

"They were looking for light arms yesterday, pistols, AK-47s because the government still thinks that the opposition is arming itself," said one Addis Ababa-based diplomat.

A heavy police presence remained on the streets on Sunday in what diplomats said was a bid to forestall possible trouble although Berhan denied the action was related to the CUD calls for protests.

Protests over alleged irregularities in the May 15 elections erupted into violence in June when police opened fire on crowds during demonstrations in the capital, killing at least 37 people.

By Reuters' Tsegaye Tadesse...

Ethiopia's top opposition party has called for new protests over election results it says were rigged, drawing a government warning it would not accept any threat to peace and security.

Bad political blood in Africa's top coffee grower has been increasing since a May 15 parliamentary poll, which triggered opposition claims of fraud and street protests in which police killed 36 people.

The opposition has complained of continuing harassment and intimidation, and on Friday said that about 20 of its members including elected MPs were beaten and arrested by police. Police have denied the accusations.

The main opposition party, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), late on Saturday issued a statement calling on its members to stage a series of protests beginning on Monday across the Horn of Africa nation.

It urged members to hold a stay-at-home strike on Monday, attend peaceful demonstrations on as-yet undecided dates, and refrain from buying products from state-supported businesses and stop listening to or watching state media.

Berhanu Hailu, Ethiopia's newly appointed information minister, described the CUD's action as "a continuation of street action that aims to undermine law and order and disrupt the peace and security of the country."

"It shows that CUD has taken the patience and magnanimity of the government as a weakness. They have been told to refrain from such street action, but the idea of peaceful struggle has not crossed their mind," Berhanu told Reuters.

The opposition has planned other protests in recent months and then called them off, blaming the government for threatening their supporters and violating their constitutional rights.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, whose ruling party won the disputed poll, has accused the opposition of using the protests to incite violence and topple his government.

Some 109 elected MPs from CUD, which boycotted parliament in protest against election results, have been stripped of their immunity from prosecution.

The political deadlock and reports of arrests prompted the European Parliament earlier this month to warn of possible cuts in development aid to Ethiopia unless the "persecution and intimidation" of opposition groups came to an end.

International observers broadly endorsed the official results of the election five months ago, but they noted some irregularities during the vote.

Sudan headed towards partition?

Leader of the Sudanese opposition movement – the Popular National Congress – Hasan A-Turabi, has given the London-based daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat an interview, in which he expressed his concerns about the possibility that southern Sudan would soon be separated from the country.

US and UK military experts seek to help in anti-LRA campaign

Via Uganda-CAN:

Today's Daily Monitor reports U.S. and British military experts have joined the hunt for leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army. On 18 October, experts traversed traversed West Nile to scour intelligence leads and assess the prevailing security situation in the region.

Genocide Intervention Network "Darfur News Brief" for October 28th

All links are from the original...

Last week the Janjaweed attacked government forces, this week refugees took aid workers hostage. With the SLA gathering to work towards unity, the government of Sudan poised to become the chair of the African Union, and the JEM threatening to pull out of AU sponsored peace talks, the coming month will be one of the most critical yet.

Representatives from the UN warn that the situation is seriously deteriorating. International action from now until the end of the year will mean the difference between a resolution and a full scale dissent into civil war. Some in the U.S. government feel that a diplomatic solution can be reached in this time, but Congress and the President continue to stall on taking real action.

On the Ground

Many international observers were stunned earlier this week when 34 aid workers in Darfur were taken hostage by refugees. The refugees were seeking the release of an arrested religious leaders. The aid workers were released on Tuesday although the religious leader remains imprisoned.

The continuing violence against aid workers has led to concerns over the ability to maintain deliveries of food aid. Malnutrition rates have been lower thanks to international aid. Some also fear that violence could threaten the upcoming harvest season. If the situation continues to deteriorate into the harvest season Darfur’s dependence on the international community will increase.

Concerns over security this week were heightened as the deadline passed for the African Union’s scheduled expansion.

Attention continues to be focused on the rebel groups within Darfur and their role in the peace process. The African Union called on rebel groups to maintain their commitment to working to achieve unity. The government of Sudan asked the international community to put pressure on rebels. This call came as the AU summit is preparing to move to Sudan, which would normally make Sudan the chairperson of the AU for the year. JEM threatened to pull out if President Bashir becomes the chairperson of the AU.

The SLA had scheduled a meeting for this week. This meeting was delayed as the SLA awaited the arrival of leaders. This meeting could result in producing a unified agenda and a widely supported leader for the SLA. Such steps are essential to ensuring that the next round of peace talks actually makes a difference on the ground in Darfur. SLA President Abdel Wahed Mohamed el-Nur may not attend because he was not part of organizing the conference.

As rebels and the government prepare for peace talks next month, UN refugee chief Antonio Guterres warned that violence could escalate into a full scale civil war unless the world acts concertedly in the next few weeks. Civil war in Darfur could lead to greater instability in the region.

International Action

After two weeks of what looked like potential progress, international action this week raised serious concerns.

The State Department answered questions about its decision to allow an American lobbyist to work for the government of Sudan. They claimed that the lobbyist will help Khartoum to understand the perspective of the United States. The lobbyist will actually help this genocidal regime improve its image and have a stronger voice in the international community.

As part of their efforts to better their diplomatic relationships, the Sudanese Ambassador to France met with members of the government of France this week to help them to understand the complications of the Darfur crisis. The Ambassador also assured them that NGOs and humanitarian workers were protected by law in Sudan.

This week the government of Sudan also asked the United States to lift the current sanctions. The U.S. said they would consider it.

The US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Jendayi Frazer, believes that a political solution will be developed by the end of the year. She warned that U.S. sanctions against Khartoum will not be lifted unless there is progress in this area. Many are not as hopeful. The government of Sudan has vowed to do better in the upcoming peace talks. But with a month to go until the talks, the world must be on watch. Things are likely to get worse during this month.

The long-awaited Darfur Peace and Accountability Act (S. 1462) is poised to move to the Senate floor. This important piece of legislation has picked up several important co-sponsors since the national call-in day and is likely to bypass the committee. Continued pressure on your Senators and Representatives in support of this bill is more necessary now than ever. On the appropriations side, it looks like the $50 million dollars for the African Union is in serious jeopardy. The AU is in desperate need of assistance. If you are a constituent of any of the following members - Kolbe (AZ), Knollenberg (MI), Kirk (IL), Crenshaw (FL), Sherwood (PA), Sweeney (NY), Rehberg (MT), Carter (TX), Lewis (CA), Lowey (NY), Jackson (IL), Kilpatrick (MI), Rothman (NJ), Fattah (PA), and Obey (WI) - please call and make sure they preserve the $50 million dollars for the African Union.

Japan and the UN are drastically extending aid to support capacity building for the AU.

The UN is beginning to issue statements against the government’s allowance of rape and unjust arrest in Darfur along with their failure to try war criminals. A judge in Sudan this week ruled that rapes are not systematic in Darfur. In an equally devastating ruling, a judge in London has denied three Darfurian refugees requests to remain in the UK, claiming that they will be fine in Khartoum.

Realizing the costs of waiting to provide aid to populations in need, the UN is starting a Global Relief Fund to provide immediate aid in crisis situations. This Fund represents a great step for the cause of saving lives. Hopefully, in realizing the power of acting immediately, the UN will also begin work towards creating a means to provide immediate protection so that aid workers do not have to be brought in to deal with displaced and decimated populations.

International Activism

Jewish and Muslim teenagers in San Antonio came together recently to start a petition asking President Bush to pressure the United Nations to intervene in Darfur.

Students at George Washington University continue to press for divestment.

The band Guster began a nation wide tour for Darfur this week. Students are invited to table at shows across the country. See GI-Net’s events calendar for details.

Special Reports Summary

Eric Reeves this week noted the patterns of genocidal violence that can be seen in Darfur and the effect that this crisis is having on stability in the region.

The International Crisis Group noted that NATO’s partnership with the AU is not working well. They called for the AU to work harder at getting a stronger mandate and to be louder about calling out the government of Sudan. They also called for the EU to step-up their support and for the UN to “double-hat” the AU mission.

Sudanese in need of necessities: Refugees from war-torn country are seeking household items

From the Mankato "Free Press"...

More Sudanese families are arriving in southern Minnesota to escape their war-torn corner of Africa, and the population now tops 520, according to Peter Chol, a Sudanese man who arrived in America a year ago.

People in the area have been generous in many ways, providing emergency short-term shelter, food assistance and English education, said Chol. But he asks Mankato-area residents to consider donating any extra household items they might be able to spare.

Chol explains what a Sudanese family finds when they walk through the door of their first unfurnished apartment.

“What is only there is electricity,” he said. “The other things you have to provide yourselves.”

Chol puts bedding, cooking utensils and other kitchenware at the top of the list of needs. But microwave ovens, furniture and other necessities would also be welcomed.

“You’re assistance will be appreciated,” said Chol, secretary general of the Southern Sudanese Community Association.

Sharon Frahm, program assistant at the Welcome Inn, said the homeless shelter has a family of five Sudanese currently staying in the five-bedroom facility, which also is the temporary home of two other families totaling 11 additional people. A family of four Sudanese is waiting in an African refugee camp for a room to open at the Welcome Inn.

Theresa House, another local shelter, is also regularly providing temporary housing for Sudanese refugees.

Frahm agreed with Chol that the refugee families tend to have numerous unmet needs as they prepare to move into more permanent housing. Welcome Inn staff try to help as much as they can, even though the families are technically no longer the shelter’s responsibility once they move out.

“We feel they need more help,” Frahm said. “... My coworker and I always say ‘Imagine getting picked up today and being dropped in Africa — no language skills, no family.’ I think it would be a very horrible situation.”

In most cases, Frahm has little doubt that the refugees would prefer to be back in their homeland if only it were safe.

Human rights groups say one rebel group operating out of southern Sudan has abducted more than 30,000 children, forcing them to serve as concubines, fighters or porters, according to The Associated Press.

The Sudanese government has been accused of backing Janjaweed militia groups to oppose certain rebel groups, and the Janjaweed have been raping and killing Sudanese of African origin. Although a shaky cease-fire went into effect this year, the United Nations estimates that fighting in Sudan has resulted in the deaths of more than 180,000 people through violence, disease or malnutrition.

“They’ve lived through awful times before they got here,” Frahm said. “It’s just terrible what they’ve gone through. A lot of these women who are here without men, it’s because their husbands were murdered.”

While most Sudanese dream of the day when a lasting peace returns to Sudan — so they can too — they are appreciative of what’s being done for them in America, Frahm said.

“They’re very grateful,” she said. “The Sudanese people are so wonderful to work with. They’re so thankful.”

Chol said anyone who has items that would be useful to a refugee family can call the Southern Sudanese Community Association at (507) 385-1147 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Callers may get an answering machine because the association is staffed by volunteers, many of them immigrants taking English language courses and other classes during the day.

“All of us, we are in school,” said Chol, a part-time Minnesota State University student. But someone will call back to set up a time to drop off the donation.

Free as a bird

From the "Age" in Melbourne...

Mahmoud Zein Elabdin paid a high price for his art, writes Chris Beck.

The African-Australian painter Mahmoud Zein Elabdin is now free to paint without political interference, but he misses his family in Sudan.

The title of his latest exhibition, Coming Home, has a dual meaning.

After a decade searching for a new home, Elabdin has settled in Australia. This year he returned to Sudan, then came back to Melbourne and completed 10 paintings that reflect his experience of displacement, loss, love and longing. "I have two homes now and I miss one when I am in the other," he says. "So the exhibition title Coming Home means I came home twice."

Elabdin says that the capital of Sudan, Khartoum, has become like a "forest of buildings" since his escape. Melbourne, he says, is better because there are a lot of parks and gardens. His paintings, inspired by the two cities, bear the disparities he has witnessed.

"In Sudan there are no trees, no anything."

The Government is a military junta led by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, which took power in 1989. President Bashir made sharia law (the Islamic legal code) stricter, banning artists from painting anything but Islamic symbols. Elabdin, who had been painting in dark, gloomy colours that related to his uneasy feelings about censorship, left his family and friends and fled Khartoum in 1995.

"I couldn't do nudes, no realistic figures, no figures in landscapes, no political symbols," Elabdin, who is not religious, says. "At that time I was very scared that maybe the police would catch me because I was against the Government. Artists were seen as rebels by the Government so most of the artists have left Sudan."

He travelled from Khartoum to Darfur in the west to Chad, which was in the midst of a civil war, on board trucks used by smugglers. The trucks travelled at night to avoid the militia, rebel fighters, bandits and desert dust storms.

Elabdin, 43, managed to sketch as they made their way through old camel trails used by nomads. "For the month I was travelling there was no time for washing, and water was very precious," he recalls. They slept by day in "friendly" (bribed) Chad villages where the truck was hidden under tarps and the "visitors" hidden away in huts.

Elabdin crossed to Libya, then on to Egypt, where he was an illegal immigrant for five years until granted UN refugee status to come to Australia in 2001.

In Cairo, with a fake visa, he worked in a small hotel and lived and painted in the two-metre-square attic of the hotel. With limited space he painted small works of "stories" about Sudanese mountain tribes on cardboard and paper and exhibited at the Cairo-Berlin Art Gallery several times. In Sudan he had lived in the city, where Arabic culture was pervasive, but he loved to travel to the mountains and take in the African culture. The paintings of his homeland took on more colour than before because they drew on happier times and not the oppression he had been feeling in his birthplace, Khartoum.

Although he had a form of freedom in Cairo, in the years he spent as an illegal alien he faced his fears every day. "Before I left Sudan I feared I would be forced to join the Government army and fight in the south or be imprisoned," he says. "On the run, I was scared of capture or of being shot in Chad by the militia or rebels. In Cairo, the police raided the hotel to check the register and took me to the police station while they studied the paperwork. I was in a sweat. If they checked my passport and saw I was illegal, I would be thrown into a crowded prison cell. In Cairo my blood turned cold whenever I saw a police uniform."

Safe in Australia, Elabdin has settled in Williamstown with his partner Sue, who he met in a drawing class. He completed a fine arts degree at the Polytechnic Arts College in Sudan the year of the military coup, and after his enforced break he became an artist in residence at Footscray Community Arts Centre. He recently walked the artists' trail to Beaumaris, viewing the scenes that captured the imagination of the Heidelberg impressionists, Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder and Tom Roberts.

"The (Heidelberg school) impressionists are like artists on the run," Elabdin says. "They packed up their paints and easels, left their studios behind and painted outdoors in all types of weather. They camped on the coastline between Sandringham and Beaumaris and captured the bay in natural light. They gave people a little piece of themselves because they were not realist painters, but artists who put their own impressions into the artwork."

But as an abstract and figurative painter, Elabdin's interpretation is different.

In his upcoming exhibition he explores two diverse continents with Australia and Africa. He has used the ochre sands of the African deserts and the bleached coastline of the Red Sea as well as Melbourne's strawberry blonde beaches as inspiration for his acrylic paintings. One artwork, titled City of Diamonds, is an interpretation of Melbourne's bayside suburbs where the lights of beachfront mansions glitter in the ocean. Another, titled Midnight on the Nile, shows the muted glow of Khartoum in the River Nile.

"I draw on contrasting images of the Red Sea in Sudan with its isolated coastlines and Melbourne's bayside suburbs with houses creeping toward the cliff-tops," he says, "Khartoum is the meeting place of the Blue Nile from Ethiopia and the White Nile from Lake Victoria, Uganda. Each river is distinctly blue or white, and when they meet, the coloured water mixes into a muddy broth like the Yarra River. In my paintings I use the shadow people (his ancestors). I also paint the shadows of the people who have trod on this land (bayside Melbourne): the Aboriginals, white settlers and yesterday's picnic makers."

The bird is one of the symbols Elabdin uses in his work.

"The bird has no borders. The bird is free."

Coming Home is at the Without Pier Gallery, Sandringham, until tomorrow [Sunday].

Genocide needs action, attention (by Andrew Stefan)

From Eastern Michigan University's "Echo"...

For roughly three years, the people of Sudan, Africa have been suffering through the horrors of genocide. With a death toll escalating to nearly 400,000 lives lost and countless instances of brutal rape, torture, and enslavement, this textbook example of ethnic cleansing will surely take its place in history along side similar events like the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide of the early 1990s. According to Amnesty International USA, this conflict has resulted in some of the worst human rights abuses imaginable.

It is to the dismay of the victims in Sudan that the U.S. media does not often publicize this dire situation. Much of the populace in this country has been kept in a state of ignorance regarding the crisis by a severe lack of coverage. It is common knowledge that the U.S. has enough power and influence to aid in the prevention of such large-scale atrocities, but like U.S. reactions during the Rwandan genocide, our government, media, and public have, for the most part, taken a spectator's position on these inexcusable acts of slaughter. It is now time for the public to arm itself with knowledge and take a stand to help bring an end to the murder and human rights abuses taking place in Sudan.

The conflict in Sudan has been raging on for almost twenty years, according to the International Crisis Group. Sudanese rebels have been struggling against the violence inflicted on them by their fundamentalist Islamic government since 1989. Initial fighting can be traced back even further to resource disagreements between farmers and herders. The intensity of this conflict increased until February 2003 when systematic murders of the civilian population began in the Darfur region of Sudan--with full support from the Sudanese government. Sudan also saw the rise of the government-backed Janjawid militia in 2003. The Janjawid group has been a primary cause for many malicious acts of abuse, including murder. Daily life quickly became a nightmare of death and destruction for the people of Sudan.

Since then, the crisis has escalated to a full-scale act of genocide. Just recently, the United Nations made a crucial decision to greatly decrease its support of humanitarian aid to the victims of Sudan for safety reasons. It was just over a decade ago when we saw the same U.N. abandonment in Rwanda during the Tutsi people's time of need. The results then were devastating and cost the lives of many innocent people. Eric Reeves, a prominent activist in the Sudan news community, speculates, "The consequences of such humanitarian withdrawal will be catastrophicultimately measuring in the hundreds of thousands of lives lost." Our country would be wise to take a lesson from history and search for ways to reestablish sufficient security for the victims of Sudan.

If this information disturbs you, please fulfill your duty as a concerned citizen by asking your government elected officials, television and radio broadcasting companies, friends and family to join you in taking steps towards ending this atrocity. To find out how you can make a difference or for more information relating to the Sudan genocide, visit these web sites:

•  www.beawitness.org
•  www.sudanreeves.org
•  www.crisisgroup.org
•  www.standnow.org
•  www.sudandivestment.org

Note: Any students interested in becoming involved with an EMU student coalition dedicated to promoting awareness of the crisis in Sudan and taking political action to push for an end to the violence, please contact Andrew Stefan at: [email protected].