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_WORLD WATCH______________________________
________________Sudan_______________
More appeals for help
Embattled bishops seek international support
The condition of displaced persons in southern Sudan—exposed to hunger, thirst, and epidemic disease, is ever more critical, according to Bishop Caesar Mazzolari of Rumbek.
The bishop told the Fides news service that “more than a million Sudanese war victims . . . are living in utter poverty and isolation, in danger of dying of hunger or diseases such as cholera, malaria, and so forth.” Although a temporary pause in the nation’s long civil war offered some hope for the beleaguered people in March, the bishop pointed out that even a lasting peace would not solve the problems of hunger and disease—and those problems would be aggravated by the onset of the summer rainy season.
Bishop Mazzolari also disclosed that when mercenary soldiers fighting for the Khartoum government pulled back from their positions in his diocese, they wreaked havoc during their retreat. “As they go they steal food and animals, and burn homes and crops,” he said. So more homeless families were forced into the refugee camps, which are already overcrowded. On a visit to several such camps early in March, the bishop reported, “I saw nearly 550,000 displaced persons in only a few hours.” The conditions in the camps were so severe, he reported, that “there is no fire burning outside their huts because there is no cooking being done.”
As a delegation of bishops from the United States visited Sudan on a fact-finding mission in April, the Sudanese bishops issued a new statement urging American help to ease the ravages of the civil war. Specifically, the Sudanese bishops asked their American counterparts to call for the imposition of a “no-fly zone” in Sudan, saying that would be the only effective way to stop government bombing raids on civilian targets. The Sudanese bishops also called for economic sanctions on the Khartoum government, in the form of restraints on sales of oil. And the bishops renewed their plea for American help in bringing an end to abuses of religious freedom and the practice of slavery.
The Sudanese bishops’ statement, signed by Bishop Macram Max Gassis of El Obeid, concluded with a note that the damages of civil war in Sudan have not been confined to the south of the country, but reach the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile region as well.