Yesterday, March 4, 2009, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant of arrest against Sudanese President Omer Hassan al Bashir. He was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the genocide in Darfur, the region of western Sudan with which the world is well acquainted. But in every corner of Sudan – north, south, east, and west – Bashir’s National Islamic Front regime has committed crimes against humanity, crimes that have shown how little regard that regime has for the humanity of others.
On January 29, 2009, Sudanese friends, Muslim and Christian together, held a demonstration at the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, DC. The date marked the fourth anniversary of a massacre of innocent citizens in northeastern Sudan by their own government.
That day in 2005, the Beja people of Sudan were in the city center of Port Sudan holding a peaceful demonstration, similar to the one which we were holding at the embassy in Washington, DC. With signs and speeches, they were calling for democracy, equality, and development of a region that had been neglected and abused by the National Islamic Front government in Khartoum. In response, government security forces shot to death twenty-one people and wounded hundreds more.
Killing innocent people is just business as usual for the National Islamic Front regime. The world has become all too familiar with genocide in Darfur and the death of over 2.5 million people in South Sudan and the Nuba Mountains. Even now, the arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court hangs over Sudanese President Omer al Bashir and those who have aided and abetted him in genocide. But the world is less familiar with the injustices of that same regime against the Beja, a people indigenous to northeastern Sudan’s Red Sea State for over four thousand years.
A statement presented to the United Nations records the events of the Beja massacre. The successful completion of the North/South peace agreement had energized other marginalized people groups of Sudan. And South Sudan leader Dr. John Garang’s vision of a New Sudan with peace, justice, and secular democracy for all Sudanese had inspired them. So on January 26, 2005, the Beja of Port Sudan submitted a petition to the governor of Red Sea State demanding true democracy. One of their complaints, incidentally, was that all of the government officials of the region, including the governor of Red Sea State, had been “imported from the center of the country.” The Beja had been exempted from any high-ranking ministerial or civil service positions in their own region.
Three days later, says the report, special security forces flew from Khartoum “and started shooting at people . . . in Beja populated neighborhoods.” The neighborhoods were several miles from the demonstrations in the city center. The report therefore concluded that the purpose of the killing was to intimidate the Beja into submission and to punish them “for their political ideas and ethnic background.”
In truth Sudanese citizens from every corner of Sudan are victimized and marginalized by the ruling Arabist Islamist elite in Khartoum. The Beja are one more African people group that inconveniences the National Islamic Front government by existing, and especially by existing on mineral-rich land. So even though they constitute fifteen percent of the entire population of Sudan, the Beja are marginalized. Their Beja language is suppressed in favor of Arabic.
Northeastern Sudan contains gold mines, oil, natural gas, and other resources. Port Sudan, Sudan’s main port city, is a strategic harbor location on the Red Sea. But in the midst of an area providing great wealth in resources and revenues, the Beja are neglected and discriminated against by the Khartoum government that does not want to share the riches with black, African Sudanese.
Jihads of many sorts have been waged by the National Islamic Front government. Even when a peace agreement ends military action, one way Khartoum has of waging warfare might be called “the jihad of neglect.” In South Sudan’s Eastern Upper Nile Province, hundreds were allowed to languish with undiagnosed and untreated leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) until South Sudan’s new, autonomous government came into existence and allowed Servant’s Heart Relief, the Christian ministry that first identified the leprosy, to treat the people. Similarly, malnutrition, anemia, tuberculosis, high infancy and maternal mortality, illiteracy, and poverty rates for the Beja are some of the highest in all of Sudan, in spite of the richness of resources. A Beja Congress report submitted to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says that the “racist policy of the ruling Arab elites in the Central and Regional Governments is destroying the life of the indigenous populations of the eastern Sudan.”
Like other marginalized people groups in Sudan, the Beja are slated for displacement from their land. Khartoum intends to completely colonize northeastern Sudan with outsiders from the Islamic world that support its efforts to Islamize and Arabize Sudan. For decades Khartoum has settled the Rashaida, a Bedouin people from Saudi Arabia, in what have traditionally been Beja homelands. More recently, the provisions of a negotiated peace agreement between the government of Sudan, the government of Eritrea, and the Eastern Front – a coalition of Sudanese rebels including the Beja Congress – seem to have compounded the injustice towards the Beja. Khartoum is now selling the Beja’s land out from under their feet to outside investors.
The massacre in Port Sudan was just one more day of brutality in a nation where brutality is commonplace, but it points to a much larger and more worrisome reality. With the support of fellow Arabist Islamists around the world, Khartoum wants to permanently alter the face and culture of Africa’s largest country. The National Islamic Front regime has, as a part of its overall agenda, the marginalization and ultimate extinction of the indigenous black African people groups from every corner of Sudan.
For decades Khartoum pitted one group against another and fueled the flames of fear and religious conflict to promote division. But the Sudanese who have been victims of this marginalization have come to see that they have more in common with each other than they have with Khartoum. Like my Sudanese friends in Washington who gathered in solidarity with the Beja at the embassy, Sudanese of many people groups are uniting against Khartoum’s racism, imperialism, and religious persecution. They want the New Sudan, a Sudan of peace, justice, and religious freedom for all.
The rest of world should take notice of this example of legitimate, non-appeasement-based Christian-Muslim reconciliation and cooperation. And regardless of the decision rendered by the International Criminal Court tomorrow, we should acknowledge the crimes across Sudan for which Bashir and his National Islamic Front regime are responsible and marginalize those who have marginalized their own people for so long.
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