TWO DAYS AGO, A YOUNG MAN SAT IN MY OFFICE DISCUSSING WITH ME THE GENOCIDE NOW TAKING PLACE IN SOUTHERN SUDAN, particularly in the region where Canada's Talisman Energy is directly involved through oil development. And he asked with tears in his eyes,

I have just finished reading a weekend article in The Observer, a British newspaper, in which I read how last month, near the Heglig oilfield north of Bentiu (where Talisman works), Meding Yieth, a Nuer tribesman, witnessed a government attack on the village of Rik. He testified that the entire village was burned, and all males older than 15 or 16 were shot. The women and children fled on foot. Some were captured and taken off to Bentiu. Others were drowned while being chased across the Bahr el Ghazal River. Yieth fled to Guk, a village a day's walk south of Rik, where he found sanctuary with a friend. Then the government army came.

The soldiers questioned his friend. He watched as his friend's wife and three young children were nailed to a tree and the children beaten with sticks to compel the father to speak. Then the soldiers cut the throats of the children. They sliced off the ears of the father and hammered nails into his temples. He was a trader, not a rebel soldier.

Others were killed with similar brutality. Older people unable to flee were herded into a cattle pen and burned alive with their animals. Witnesses stated that this was not a matter of intertribal warfare. None of the invading soldiers were black and they arrived with guns and helicopter gunships. African tribesmen don't ride around in helicopters.

I sit here at my computer and I am numb. And the young man's words haunt me, just as they did two days ago.

Quite frankly, I don't know anymore. I have met with Canadian Foreign Affairs officials at the highest levels, and they promised me (and others who were with me) that Canada would bring up the issue of Sudan when Canada had the chairmanship of the UN Security Council. They promised.

They broke their promise. Just as they broke their promise to seriously consider sanctions on Sudan if evidence could be found during the fact-finding mission led by John Harker late last year.

The evidence was found. Irrefutable evidence.

But the report was given to Talisman before it was released to the Canadian public, and the government response was so weak and ineffective that only Talisman and the Sudanese government responded positively to it.

We had such hopes. Such naïve hopes that Canada's longstanding reputation for speaking out on human rights abuses, even when others remain silent, would come through once more.

Such naïve hopes.

And I feel betrayed by my own government and foolish for actually believing them.

And I am ashamed to be a Canadian. This country, which gave sanctuary to my ancestors when they were fleeing the atrocities of Stalin, has turned its back on its responsibility to require its citizens and businesses abroad to act in a civilized manner. We have turned our backs on atrocities that we could do something about. But, for reasons that escape me, we refuse to do anything concrete whenever we stand in the place where we actually could.

I have written letters to every government official I can think of. I have written to the leaders of Talisman (and before that, Arakis). The Voice of the Martyrs has given away thousands of videos depicting the horrors taking place in Sudan. I have visited the country twice (most recently last January), and spoken in person to the Sudanese embassy staff in Ottawa. I have made sure that my mutual funds do not have holdings in Talisman and ordered my financial advisors to change those that did. I have traveled from one end of Canada to the other, speaking about Sudan, and invited the best experts that I can think of to speak at our conferences on the issue. We have launched a card writing campaign to the Prime Minister, appealing to him to stop Canada's complicity in the slaughter taking place in the oil fields of Sudan. I have protested outside of the Toronto Stock Exchange. And I have prayed. Oh, how I have prayed. And sent out so many of these Persecution & Prayer Alerts and published so many articles on Sudan, that people have begun to wonder if VOM is a mission primarily focused on Sudan.

"What else can we do???" is the question I keep coming back to.

The question haunts me, because I frankly don't know.

And it breaks my heart.

"Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted." (Habakkuk 1:2-4) 

Tel. (905) 602-4832
vom@planeteer.com
http://www.persecution.net

April 19, 2000

Index of Simply Sharing

Links to Share