---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Ashworth <[email protected]> Date: Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 8:13 PM Subject: [sudan-john-ashworth] Amnesty International interviews Blue Nile Refugees To: Group <[email protected]>
Below please find "Refugees tell of bombing in Sudan’s Blue Nile State", in two parts, by Donatella Rovera, Crisis Researcher, and Khairunissa Dhala, Campaigner for the Sudan & South Sudan team, Amnesty International. They are currently in South Sudan and have been meeting the refugees displaced by repeated Sudanese army airstrikes on their towns and villages in Blue Nile State, who are now sheltering in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State. Also available online at: http://livewire.amnesty.org/2011/12/06/refugees-tell-of-bombing-in-sudan%E2%80%99s-blue-nile-state-part-1/ http://livewire.amnesty.org/2011/12/07/refugees-tell-of-bombing-in-sudan%E2%80%99s-blue-nile-state-part-2/ BEGIN Refugees tell of bombing in Sudan’s Blue Nile State: Part 1 By Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s Crisis Researcher & Khairunissa Dhala, Amnesty International’s Campaigner for Sudan & South Sudan “Because of the bombing” is what every single one of the refugees told us when we asked why they had fled their homes. In the past few days we have been meeting the refugees displaced by repeated Sudanese army airstrikes on their towns and villages in Sudan’s Blue Nile State. They are now sheltering in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State. More than 20,000 have fled their homes since the conflict broke out between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army – North (SPLM/A-N) on 1 September this year. They have fled with nothing but a small amount of food for the journey, because they had to carry their children and help their elderly or disabled relatives. Refugees have walked for days to reach a hastily set up camp in Dorro, just outside the poor and isolated small town of Bunj in South Sudan, which does not even have the most basic services for its own population. Until the arrival of the refugees there was not a single doctor in the town’s small and dilapidated hospital. For Bunj’s 60,000 people, the nearest hospital with doctors is in the town of Renk, five hours by road in the dry season and considerably longer in the rainy season. Now there is one doctor, who arrived a few weeks ago with the refugees from Blue Nile State. When we met him he was busy installing a sink in one of the hospital rooms which will be used as an operating theatre. He was pleased to have received a bed, donated by an international humanitarian organization, which will serve as an operating table. Until now he has been operating on patients on a stretcher. In the hospital ward some of the patients, many of them soldiers injured in the conflict, were lying on thin straw mats on the floor due to lack of beds or space. Near the refugee camp on the outskirts of town, at a small clinic whose entire medical personnel consists of a single nurse, we met Ayub Dan. His wife Marta, a 27-year-old mother of seven, was killed on 10 November in an air strike in Bellatuma village in Sudan’s Blue Nile State. Ayub said: “I was at the market with my wife but was in a different part of the market when the market was bombed. We threw ourselves on the ground when we heard the Antonov above. It was panic.” “When I found my wife, she was lying on the ground face down and was dead; a large piece of shrapnel had gone through from her back to her chest.” “ The plane dropped several bombs; I counted 12, three each time it flew over and it flew over four times – back and forward twice”. With Ayub in the camp were two of his daughters, six-year-old Manasia and 14-year-old Barshiba: both were injured on the same day in another air strike near their home in the nearby town of Yabus. Barshiba told us that while her parents were away at the market, she and her siblings at home had heard the sound of an Antonov place circling above, and had run out of their hut into the nearby fields where they were struck by shrapnel. Manasia sustained serious wounds to her left armpit and chest and Barshiba had part of her right buttock sliced off. Both require medical care that is not available in Bunj. At the same clinic we met other civilians who were injured in the air strikes on Bellatuma market. Juma Markan, a 30 year old mother of seven, told us that she was at her home near the market when an Antonov flew over the village four times and dropped 12 bombs. She lay down on the floor, with her one-year-old child clinging to her chest. A piece of shrapnel went through the thatched roof of her hut and cut through her back. She could not move and spent the night in her house until a relative found a car and took her to Marinji village, where there was a clinic. She spent one week there until she was taken to South Sudan to the Dorro refugee camp at Bunj. When we met her, her back was covered in bandages and her wounds infected. She too needs medical care which is not available at the clinic. Her husband and children are still in Bellatuma and she is waiting for them to come to the refugee camp. Bana Dau told us that he and his ten year old daughter Piney were at the market selling roasted meat when they heard an Antonov overhead. He told his daughter to lie down. Shortly after the explosions Piney started crying and blood was soaking through her clothes. She had been hit by a piece of shrapnel in her back. He carried her home and got neighbours to take them to the clinic in Marinji village. They then travelled across the border to the refugee camp. According to what these and other survivors of the attacks told us, the bombing of Bellatuma market killed nine civilians – five women, two men and two children,. We cannot go to Bellatuma or anywhere else in Blue Nile State to investigate further, and neither can anyone else. The Sudanese government is keeping the area closed off to international human rights and humanitarian organizations and to UN aid agencies. Refugees tell of bombing in Sudan’s Blue Nile State: Part 2 The Sudanese government is keeping Blue Nile State closed off to human rights NGOs and aid agencies, including the UN. The closest we could get to Blue Nile State was New Guffa, a village in South Sudan, near the Sudanese border. Air strikes by the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) around the village have displaced hundreds of residents. On the outskirts of New Guffa, we found the small hamlet of Yafta completely deserted. Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) soldiers reportedly lived in Yafta with their families, and fighters and refugees from across the border had stopped in the village after crossing over into South Sudan. Outside the village we found one family still living there. Elia Omar, a father of four, told us that he and his family would run to hide in the bush whenever they hear the noise of the SAF Antonov aircrafts circling in the sky – a regular occurrence he said. He showed us the location of an air strike near his home – one of several cross-border strikes launched by the SAF into South Sudan between late September and mid-November this year. Twenty minutes’ walk towards the border we saw the locations of other air strikes. At each site we saw a large hole, pieces of shrapnel, and trees all around lacerated by shrapnel. We saw fresh graves nearby. We were told that several people had been killed in recent strikes. Some were residents of the village, others were refugees, and some were SPLM-N fighters who had come across the border with the refugees. A refugee couple and their young child from Kurmuk, in Sudan’s Blue Nile State, were reportedly killed in an air strike in the afternoon of 27 October. Three SPLM-N fighters were also reportedly killed by another strike in the morning of 9 November. It was after this strike that the villagers fled. Around New Guffa hundreds of refugees from across the border in Sudan’s Blue Nile State are now sleeping out in the open. Some are resting before resuming the long walk of several days to reach the refugee camp at Dorro, just outside the small town of Bunj. Others, mostly the elderly or disabled, are waiting in the hope that someone will send a vehicle to fetch them. Hangouk Hooba, a man in his sixties from Kolnugra village near the town of Ura in Sudan had arrived at the Dorro camp with his family two weeks ago. They carried whatever food they had at home and took their goats with them. It had taken them three weeks to reach the camp. He told us that he had been cultivating his crops in the fields when he heard an Antonov fly overhead and drop four bombs. When he got home the village was in chaos with people running in all directions in fear. Three bombs had dropped on the outskirts of the village, and one lay unexploded near the bridge. The villagers decided that it was no longer safe to stay in the village. They hid in the bush outside the village and that night they went home, packed whatever they could carry and left. Litia Shabe, a 40 year old woman at Dorro camp said that she fled Sudan for the South because she didn’t want to die. She is from Jindi, a village south of Kurmuk, the former SPLA-N stronghold in Blue Nile State. She said that she had been hearing bombings around the village and was afraid. In mid-November on a Friday afternoon, her fears came true. Two bombs fell in Jindi village causing hundreds to flee, including Litia, her husband and their seven children. They walked for days to reach the refugee camp in South Sudan. Fayza Rubat, a 29-year-old mother of four also from Jindi, told us that her husband, a fighter in the SPLA-N, was killed in the fighting three months ago. Six weeks later, as the fighting and the bombing intensified around Jindi, she decided to leave for the South, taking nothing with her as she had to carry her young children. At the refugee camp registration point we met 32-year-old Jubara Atum, who had just arrived from Mayek, a village west of Kurmuk in Sudan. He said that two weeks earlier, as an Antonov plane was circling over Mayek, he ran to the bush to seek shelter with his family. He heard the bombs falling nearby and decided to stay in the bush for the next 14 days. Since the situation continued to deteriorate, he decided not to return to Mayek and crossed the border to the refugee camp, leaving all his possessions behind. In Dorro camp many refugees have received some humanitarian assistance, and some food distribution has begun in the last few days. However, while waiting for food aid to arrive, some refugees told me they had been selling some of the aid items they received such as buckets and soap, to raise money to buy food. Sanitary conditions are dire; there are few latrines or water points, and women –are queuing for hours for water. Some refugees have put up flimsy shelters made of straw, cloth or plastic sheets (the latter provided by UN aid agencies), and others are sheltering under the trees. For now everything about this new refugee camp is temporary, but some humanitarian organizations here are preparing for the long haul. They may be right. Most of those displaced by the various conflicts in Sudan in recent years are still living in camps in neighbouring countries or in Sudan itself. END ______________________ John Ashworth Sudan Advisor [email protected] +254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile) +211 919 695 362 (South Sudan mobile) +27 82 853 3556 (South Africa mobile) +44 750 304 1790 (UK/international) +88 216 4334 0735 (Thuraya satphone) PO Box 52002 - 00200, Nairobi, Kenya This is a personal e-mail address and the contents do not necessarily reflect the views of any organisation -- The content of this message does not necessarily reflect John Ashworth's views. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, John Ashworth is not the author of the content and the source is always cited. You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sudan-john-ashworth" group. 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