After
two decades of genocidal war in Sudan, a peace accord was
signed in April, 2005. Africa’s longest and bloodiest
civil war was finally showing signs of ending. The peace
has been fragile, and there have been flare-ups of old animosities
and killings, but the daily murderous rampage has stopped. Additionally, the
world community has now come to accept its responsibility to intercede on behalf
of those who have been victimized by hatred and ethnic intolerance in Sudan.
However,
like Rwanda before it, Sudan has been so bloodied and terrorized
by lawlessness that it will take generations to recuperate
from the horrors perpetrated there. The story of the history
of the last decades of the twentieth century in the Sudan
will be one of unparalleled inhumanity against one’s countrymen. It will also be a story of shame
for the world community that once again watched silently
as millions of innocents were slaughtered or displaced. The
United Nations has called Darfur in the Sudan the world’s
worst manmade humanitarian crisis of our time.
The
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops weighed in
on the situation in both July and August of 2005, encouraging
the House International Relations committee to do all it
could to support the efforts being made to keep the peace
in the Sudan. Bishop Ricard, the Chair of the Committee on
International Policy of the USCCB, had personally visited
Darfur and Sudan and was shaken by the untold human suffering
and assaults on the human dignity of the people there. Pressing
his point with the Committee, Bishop Ricard told them that
the World Food Program’s prediction that 3.5 million
people may require food assistance in Darfur illustrates
the urgency and magnitude of the crisis. He continued: “We
cannot stand idly by while human life is threatened. The
United States and the international community can and must
do more to end this moral and humanitarian crisis. We hope
that passage of the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act will
reinforce the urgency of a peaceful solution to the situation
in Darfur that has so tragically impacted innocent people.
We offer our prayers that their suffering may end soon.”
Tonj:
an Important Salesian Presence
In the face of all this suffering, the Salesians have maintained
a presence in the Sudanexperiencing
first hand the threats of violence, the pains of hunger,
and the desperation of a people forcibly evicted from their
homes. More than a hundred people were being killed per
day as they tried to escape the marauding forces. In Tonj,
the Salesians have been caring for the unwilling migrants
whose very being shows their desolation.
Looted
schools, hospitals, and public buildings have been wantonly
destroyed. Partial walls hint at the outlines of former
buildings and silently bear witness to once thriving towns
that the displaced persons called home.
Just
getting to Tonj can be a daunting task. Roads, for all
practical purposes, do not exist. The only time that
trucks can make the arduous journey to Tonj is during the
dry season. Providing essential goods to the people is a
constant problem, both because of the cost and the dangers
of journeying for two days in an area where lawlessness reigns.
The “Don Bosco Mission Center” in Tonj is an
oasis in the desert of death that surrounds it. In it, the
people are able to find renewed trust and hope for the future.
The Center is jointly administered by the Salesians of Don
Bosco and the Salesian Sisters and its ministries include:
a large parish, a school, a medical clinic, and a leprosarium.
While the facilities may appear to be primitive when considered
against the standards of more developed nations, they have
become the focal point of reference in a community that has
no central administration.
The
work in Tonj has not been easy. The Center was forced to
shut down operations for a number of years during the most
violent stage of the war. One Salesian was held prisoner
by the guerrillas for eighteen months. The buildings were
sacked. It has only been since the beginning of 2002 that
the Salesians have been able to be an active presence in
the city once again, and they have returned with great enthusiasm
and zeal.
Because schools were shut down for nearly twenty years, the
educational level of the people has suffered. But they are
eager to learn, and their thirst for knowledge and formal
education is strong. Classes on the most primary level are
attended by students who range in age from 6 to 16. Adult
education has students from 17 to 50. Playing catch-up for
years of neglect means that everyone is at the most rudimentary
level of education, but their eagerness to advance is moving
to see.
Brother
Comino Reports
“More than 250,000 people are dependent on outside help,” reports
Salesian Brother Giacomo Comino during a recent visit to the Pontifical Aid
Agency in Vienna (Austria). For several years Br. Giacomo has been the
Bursar of the St. Joseph Institute in Khartoum, in the city where for ten years
more than a million evacuees from the southern region of Sudan have been living
in inhuman conditions. Br. Giacomo had been able to visit the refugee
camps in the Darfur region, before the arrival of the humanitarian organizations,
thanks to his local contacts. “In these camps there is an incredible
desperation and great misery. The evacuees try to build temporary shelters
with branches and sheets of plastic which are then destroyed with the next
downpour.” But the greatest need is for food and medicine. Br. Giacomo
cannot see an end to the humanitarian catastrophe: “Only when people
feel safe will they return home. How-ever when they try to start again they
will need help from outside. There has been too much destruction by the militias
in the western region of Sudan: more than 50,000 have died and more than a
million have left their villages.” With the help of “Mission Austria” medicines,
grain, oil, milk and plastic tents have been distributed among the poor people
in the region of Darfur.
In
Darfur, out of 6.7 million inhabitants more than 1.2 million
have had to escape from their own land to find refuge in
the neighboring regions. About a million have fled to Chad,
300,000 are fighting for survival every day. Sickness and
death are on the increase in an alarming manner. They need
food, water, a place to live, and medicines against epidemics.
The Salesians in Sudan have responded to the emergency: “We
have sent a representative there as a point of contact and
to keep us in touch. For the present as the first immediate
response we are sending by air and by trucks basic necessities,” says
Br. Giacomo Comino. “We have sent about a ton
of medicine, donated by the pharmaceutical suppliers of Dr.
Marchetti in Rome and imported through the Embassy, since
the government makes it very difficult otherwise. We are
looking for further assistance, especially funds to buy things
locally to respond to the basic needs for survival, as we
try to save as many lives as possible.”
While
some have sought refuge in Tonj, others have gone to Kakuma,
Kenya, just across the border from Sudan. In a new “city” compromised
of 70,000 refugees, the Salesians have set up three technical
schools within the camp. They have helped provide food, shelter,
education, and recreation to the desperate people who escaped
murder and hunger.
Salesian
Rector Major
Visits Sudan
Displaced
people are forced into makeshift homes.
|
On August 31, 2005, the 9th Successor of Don Bosco, V. Rev.
Fr. Pascual Chavez arrived at Khartoum
International Airport. He was garlanded and given a bouquet
of flowers by youngsters and then officially received at
the Presidential Lounge at Khartoum International Airport.
Most of the Salesians of the Sudan were present, as well
as many Salesian Sisters. His pastoral visit to this troubled
land was done to show the solidarity of the entire Salesian
congregation with our suffering brothers and sisters there.
While the dominant sound heard for many years in Sudan
was that of gunfire and bombs, on the day of the Rector
Major’s arrival, the air was alive with music provided
by the bands from the Salesian schools in El Obeid and
Khartoum Tech. On September 1st, the Rector Major presided
at a Jubilee Eucharist. During the homily, the Rector Major
presented his dream for Africa to the Salesians and the
800 or so youngsters and people who were present: peace,
brotherhood, the protection of the sanctity of life, food
for all, economic and social development and of people
coming closer to God, living by Gospel values. The Rector
Major endeared himself to the people by his simplicity,
sense of humor and clarity of thought. He has promised
to come again to the Sudan.
This
desert land, overwhelmed by war, drenched in blood is now
the land to which God has called the Salesians to be apostles
to the young. Our five works there – St. Joseph
Tech in Khartoum, Don Bosco Training Center in El Obeid,
missionary parishes in Khartoum, Tonj and Wao – are
the present fields of ministry in which we try to plant the
seeds of hope so that the future of the Sudan will be brighter
than the past and war will be a distant reality. We ask our
readers to join us in praying for the people of Sudan and
for the Salesians ministering there, so that they may persevere
in building up their country.
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