Open Letter To President Obama: Now Is The Time To Act To Prevent Starvation In The Nuba Mountains
March 2, 2012 (SSNA) -- In blatant contravention of the 2005
Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the Government of Sudan (GoS) has carried
out a brutal assault for the past eight months against the people of
the Nuba Mountains. Due to abject fear, an estimated 200,000 people have
sought sanctuary in mountain caves where they are attempting to eke out
an existence without food. Many are already suffering from
malnutrition.
As the GoS indiscriminately bombs farms, villages, churches, and schools,
it disingenuously claims that it is solely targeting members of the
Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement/Army-North, the latter of which is
intent on freeing the Nuba Mountains from the iron fist of Khartoum. The
fact of the lie is seen in the stony eyes of the dead -- babies,
children, women and the elderly -- in the gory photos now coming out of
the Nuba Mountains.
Equally grave is the fact that the GoS has prevented the
international community from providing humanitarian aid to those in dire
need of food in the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile State. The ongoing
attacks in the Nuba Mountains have prevented many farmers from planting
seasonal crops, thus disrupting the agricultural cycle and leaving many
people without adequate sources of food. Food insecurity has been
exacerbated by restrictions on access to markets and the destruction of food stores.
This is not the first time that the GoS has resorted to starving the
Nuba people; it did so in the late 1980s and 1990s. The people were so
desperate they “ate” leaves, grass, and roots. The international
community did virtually nothing to address the mass starvation, and as a
result an untold number of people died miserable deaths in a classic
case of genocide by attrition. Such inattention and lack of action must
not be repeated.
Only once in the past eight months (August 30th) has the GoS
authorized any outside agencies (in this case, UNICEF) to offload
emergency health supplies, vaccines, and nutrition assistance
into the Nuba Mountains. International humanitarian actors continue to
advocate strongly for access to conflict-affected populations in both
Government- and SPLM-N controlled areas, but the GoS continues to deny
them permission to do so.
Over a month ago, on January 21st, your administration suggested that
it was considering the possibility of opening up a humanitarian
corridor in South Kordofan in order to provide desperately needed aid.
To date, your administration has not acted and neither has the United
Nations. It seems as if you and your fellow world leaders do not
understand that each and every day that goes by, an ever-increasing
number of people are bound to face malnutrition and its ill effects,
including death by starvation. The time to act is now, not a month or
two from now when lives will have already been lost to abject hunger. As
U.S. Permanent Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice recently noted: “If
there is not a substantial new inflow of aid by March,” the situation in
Southern Kordofan will be “one step short of full-scale famine.”
While we understand that at this point in time neither the U.S.
government nor the U.N. are willing to intervene militarily to protect
civilians in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile, as they did in Libya, we
believe that it is imperative that action be taken immediately to
provide food to the region. Indeed, we beseech you and your
administration to place pressure on the United Nations to act now
to open a humanitarian corridor in order to provide humanitarian aid to
those in the Nuba Mountains who have faced horrific and ongoing
atrocities and a near-famine at the hands of a murderous regime whose
president (Omar al Bashir) is already wanted by the International
Criminal Court on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war
crimes for the atrocities perpetrated in Darfur.
As a presidential candidate, you promised you would be proactive,
versus reactive, in addressing potential and actual genocide. It is time
to honor that commitment and press the international community to open a
humanitarian corridor. If the U.S. and the rest of the international
community continue to dither there is a very real possibility that many
of the 200,000 people may end up victims of genocide by attrition.
At the least, the international community should honor its commitment
to the “Responsibility to Protect,” and demand an immediate end to the
violence in Sudan and unimpeded access to civilian populations by human
rights monitors and humanitarian aid personnel. If the United Nations
fails in this responsibility, then we urge you, President Obama, to
accept the moral responsibility and to act now, along with the European
Union and our African allies, to avert mass starvation in the Nuba
Mountains and Blue Nile regions.
Sincerely,
Dr. Samuel Totten
Professor
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
and
Professor Hannibal Travis
Florida Atlantic University Law School
and
Dr. John Hubbel Weiss
Professor
Cornell University
Samuel Totten, a genocide scholar at the
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, has conducted research in the Nuba
Mountains. His latest book, Genocide by Attrition: The Nuba Mountains,
Sudan is due out in 2012 (New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers).
Hannibal Travis is a professor at Florida
Atlantic University Law School. His most recent book is Genocide in the
Middle East: The Ottoman Empire, Iraq and Sudan.
John Weiss is a professor of history at Cornell University.
ADDITIONAL SIGNEES
Jack Slater Armstrong
Founder/Director
Joining Our Voices Ministries, Inc
Randall Butler, J.D.
CEO & President
The Institute for Sustainable Peace
909 Texas, Ste. 1712
Houston, TX 77002
Dr. Israel. W. Charny (U.S. citizen)
Director, Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide and Founder of Genocide Prevention Now
Jerusalem, Israel
Rabbi Abraham Cooper
Associate Dean
Simon Wiesenthal Center
Los Angeles, California
Norman L. Epstein M.D. CCFP (EM)
Faculty of Emergency Medicine at University of Toronto
Co-chair CASTS(Canadians Against Slavery and Torture in Sudan)
Dr. Herb Hirsch
Professor, Department of Political Science
Virginia Commonwealth University
Dr. Robert Hitchcock
Professor, Department of Geography
Michigan State University
Dr. Steven Leonard Jacobs
Professor, Department of Religious Studies
The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
Ara Khachatourian
Editor
Asbrez Daily Armenian Newspaper
Los Angeles, California
Hon. David Kilgour
Canadian Minister of State for Africa, 1997-2002
Robert Melson
Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science
Purdue University
Dr. Donald E. Miller
Professor of Religion and Executive Director, Center for Religion and Civic Culture
University of Southern California
Nuba Mountains Peace Coalition
Dallas Peace Center
Dallas, Texas
Dr. Jon Pedersen
Associate Dean for Research
College of Education and Human Sciences
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Dr. Eric Reeves
Sudan Researcher and Analyst
Smith College, Northampton, MA
Dr. Caesar Ricci, MD, MPH
Surgery Resident
University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio
Dr. Nicholas A. Robbins
Professor
Department of History
North Carolina State University
Dr. Karen Shawn
Visiting Associate Professor
Yeshiva University, New York City
Dr. Robert Skloot
Professor Emeritus
College of Arts and Science
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Dr. Roger W. Smith
Professor Emeritus of Government
College of William and Mary
Williamsburg, Virginia
Dr. Gregory Stanton
President, Genocide Watch
Professor
George Mason University School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, Arlington, VA
Dr. Ervin Staub
Professor of Psychology Emeritus
Founding Director of the Psychology of Peace and Violence Doctoral Program
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Dr. Henry Theriault
Department of Philosophy
Worcester State University, Worcester, MA
Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey
Visiting Scholar, Department of History
University of Pennsylvania
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