Nuba women feel cheated and betrayed

A man sits with blackened stumps of what used to be hands raised to the camera. He explains how his captors used red-hot iron bars and knives to break his spirit so that he would confess his links with the Sudanese Liberation Army rebels. "When I failed to cry, they called me a big rebel and tortured me more," he says.

This scene is taken from Nuba Conversations, a 55-minute documentary on the suffering of the mountain-dwelling central Sudan people caught in the crossfire between the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the SPLA as the battle for supremacy in Africa's largest country

This film appears to be an indictment of the world for not doing anything to alleviate the suffering of the Nuba people who are raped, enslaved, crucified and killed by the Khartoum government. The Nuba Mountains are littered with mass graves, with the remains of destroyed villages, and with the so-called peace camps, where women and children are herded. The filmmaker, British Arthur Howes, says his goal is to generate debate so something can be done to end the suffering of the Nuba.

The documentary certainly generated debate at its Nairobi premier two years ago, as the director was accused of not providing any hope in his film but a catalogue of hopelessness which could be taken as propaganda. Howse defended himself by saying that Nuba Conversations was made for a Western and not an African audience. "This is to awaken the West to the desperate station in the Sudan," he said. Many, like Father Sesana Kizito of Comboni Fathers, felt the film should have provided some hope, even if not of political nature, saying that Howes should not detach himself from the problem at hand. The film is a sequel to Kafi's Story, a 53-minute documentary made by Howes in 1989 to celebrate the Nuba culture.

Howes had lived among the Nuba for two years, working as a teacher of English.

This was a time of relative peace. But upon my return a decade later, the people had been uprooted from their villages and I had to search for them in the slums of Khartoum, in the mountain villages, all the way to the UNHCR Kakuma Refugee Camp in northern Kenya," he says. "In the past, the Nuba were isolated from the north and south by the mountains. Over centuries, they lived here, defending themselves from slave raiders and other enemies. But they can no longer do this against planes and bombs."

Nuba man wonders what next for his survival

Numbering around a million people, the Nuba grow millet, groundnuts, sesame and vegetables and raise animals. Although discriminated against in education, employment and civil rights, they make up a large proportion of the army. As mechanised farming schemes have taken over their land, those who have resisted the takeover of their farms have been harassed, imprisoned or murdered. Government forces fighting the SPLA destroy Nuba villages and farms as they plant land mines, seize people, rape women, abduct children, and force men to join their militias.

The Khartoum government, Howse says, also sets the local Baggara Arab pastoralists against the Nuba. As the Baggara have lost their grazing lands to commercial farms, Howes contends, they have been armed and trained as a paramilitary People's Defence Force and encouraged to take over Nuba farms. This has resulted in famine but Khartoum prevents international relief agencies from reaching the needy while the international community ignores their plight as they view them as having no monetary value. "No UN aid or human-rights monitoring has ever occurred here.

After every horror of the 20th century, we promise ourselves never to allow this to happen again. Now is the time to act. What can we do?" Khartoum says its war is against "rebel infidels" and the Nuba who support the SPLA are branded traitors against Islam and their mosques are razed. A Nuba Muslim leader says in the film, "I refuse their version of Islam, their Islam of looting, burning and killing. I believe we are the true Muslims."

Nuba men in the national army

However, the discovery of oil in the southwest of the Nuba Mountains to the conspiracy of the world to ignore the suffering of the Nuba, Howes says, could exacerbate the suffering. This oil is to be exploited by several companies from China, Malaysia, Sweden, Austria, France and Canada. The leading company is Talisman Energy of Canada. "If this project succeeds, Khartoum would get money with which to fund the war. The pipeline to carry the oil runs through the western fringes of the Nuba Mountains," he says. "Even were the south to secede, the Nuba would not benefit as they would remain in the north under a government that is bent on destroying them. They fear that politicians in both northern and southern Sudan are ready to trade Nuba rights in order to achieve peace." Talk of being caught between the devil and the dark blue sea!

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