Tammy,
This is unfortunate, but maybe if we pray that Islam leaves the Sudan and that starvation is no longer used against the Christians, maybe we can see relief?
Starvation is horrible. Use of starvation is even worse.
http://www.faculty.fairfield.edu/faculty/hodgson/Courses/so191/AfricaReadings/SudanFamine.html I know this is a 'prayer' forum, but we must also recognize why starvation exists. Pray for the Christians.
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I hope this puts things in perspective. I don't know what the UN can or will do. It is a Islam-Christianity issue.
These things we must understand:
"Forced starvation
Bennett says that in addition to the more immediate, readily apparent atrocities taking place, there is a slower, less perceptive persecution that is equally deadly.
Forced starvation is one of the primary tools of the Khartoum regime, he says. When government forces attack a Christian village, they kill everyone they catch, but those who flee lose everything necessary for survival.
"The government comes in and burns the crops, burns grain stored if there was any excess, burns houses down," Bennett said. "Now you have only the clothes on your back, no tools, no cooking pots, no buckets for water, and you have to run two days through the bush in 115-degree temperatures in order to escape."
In the arid wilderness, escapees try to survive on tree leaves and stagnant, dysentery-infested water. If a women is breastfeeding, her milk dries up, Bennett said, and the baby starts dying. Small children, just weaned, also start dying.
"But all the family has to do is change their name to Muhammad or Ramadan, convert to Islam and walk the two days back to the government of Sudan who will care for them," he said."
For the entire article see:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26672 -------
From:
http://www.boundless.org/1999/features/a0000099.html "Those who don�t die from starvation face the horrors of life under radical Islam: Women and children are taken as slaves and concubines and forced to convert to Islam. ... The horror is unimaginable � the kind most of us would prefer not to think about."
The glories of Islam?
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In the south, deliberate mass starvation was the regime's most lethal weapon and accounted for most of the two million deaths. After the civilian population was driven from their fields and farms through ethnic-cleansing tactics by the militias and air raids, Khartoum banned the distribution of internationally donated humanitarian relief for varying lengths of time and for certain areas. It banned international aid to the Nuba for nearly a decade, resulting in a crisis that was the first and most glaring example of "genocide" in Sudan. In 1998 it was estimated that the Bashir government brought a staggering 2.5 million southerners to the brink of starvation by such tactics.
Forcible mass starvation was the genocidal tactic that the Bashir regime was most reluctant to give up in the southern conflict. As late as October 2002, the regime was impeding aid delivery by arbitrarily specifying in its routine monthly decrees to international relief agencies that the large capacity "Buffalo" aircraft could not be used by the U.N. World Food Program and that certain locations in Upper Nile and Bahr El Ghazal were "denied" permission to receive aid. The identical tactic of blocking humanitarian aid to the displaced is occurring today in Darfur. Even now USAID is projecting that as many as a million could die as a result.
The entire article can be read here:
http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/weveseen.htm So much for UN help.
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The Nuba is a highly conflicted area because it is inside the northern region. The people speak Arabic, but their sympathies and ethnic ties are to the south. The majority are Christians, yet they are religiously tolerant of other beliefs. For these reasons, the Nubians are an embarrassment to the radical Islamic cause. Thus, a specific Jihad was declared in 1992. The Nuba has been designated as a "no go" area to keep out UN relief planes. All supply lines with the south have also been cut off. The area is frequently bombed, and a scorched earth policy is in practice to drive the civilians away. Low-flying helicopter gun ships deliberately hunt and mow down women and children. Refugees and prisoners are taken to so-called "peace camps" where they live in confinement, forced labor, and forced Islamization. They must pay the price of indoctrination and conversion to Islam or suffer torture, starvation, and death. The children, who hide in the rocks to avoid capture, are orphans in reality as few of their parents ever make it back home. It is estimated that there are as many as 65,000 orphans and abandoned children in the Nuba.
See:
http://www.cswusa.com/Countries/Sudan-TheSudanStory.htm -------
After a slow, tortuous, six-year study in which many hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, in 1989 the UN initiated "Operation Lifeline Sudan" to provide food for the many homeless Christian victims of the Muslim slash-and-burn policy1. From 1989 to 2002, this project has cost more than $3 billion, mostly in US taxpayer monies. However according to the UN's own report, there has been no change in the starvation rate in Sudan since the inception of its program1. For $3 billion, the UN could have built a McDonald's in every village in Sudan, given the food away free for the last 13 years, and still had money to spare1. In fact, Sudanese Christians attest emphatically that they have never received any UN assistance1. Rather, most of the UN food aid has been given to the Islamic government in Khartoum, who then use it to bait and coerce Christians into converting to Islam.
Read the rest at:
http://www.helpthebishops.com/MuslimSudannf.htm -------
Sudan's Politics of Famine Against the Dinka
Turning now to Sudan, the North has systematically denied food to populations in the South, in what has to be called a "politics of famine." Let us first consider the Dinka. Between May 1983 and May 1993, at least one in five southerners, primarily Dinka, (1.5 million) died primarily by starvation and its effects. This coincided with the Nimeiri government's drive to Islamize the country and its imposition of Islamic religious law even on non-Moslems.
http://www.isg-iags.org/oldsite/newsletters/29/fein.html -------
The number of Sudanese who have died from starvation, exploitation, and military attacks since 1983 is estimated to be between 1.5 to 2.5 million. The systematic persecution of the Sudanese people by the Sudanese central government has forced 5.5 million people to flee their homes for safety. Murder, rape, mutilation, forced conversions, enslavement are some of the means the radical Muslim government use in its attempt to Islamize the entire population. The order has been given by Omar Hassan al Turabi, leader of Sudan�s Muslim Brotherhood (the spiritual leader of Sudan) that Christians, moderate Muslims, and animists (those following tribal religions) are infidels and can be killed on sight. He takes pride in the fact that government soldiers kill and maim in the name of Allah (Mission Sudan).
http://home.earthlink.net/~drbettyh/Sudanpage.htm
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the Khartoum government manipulates international food aid to create "calculated starvation." In 1998 Khartoum used its UN sanctioned veto power to ban all relief for two critical months, bringing 2.5 million to the brink of starvation. In addition, food is denied those who will not convert to Islam. A February 1999 release from Fides, the Vatican Press Service, reports that in the southern Sudanese city of Wau alone, every month at least 1500 people die of starvation, and in the whole Bahr El Ghazal region it is estimated that 700 die every day.
I think we need a lot of prayer on this one. The UN is useless - as always.
Joe
