May 17, 2013
Marach Garang Athian (Liberated March 2013)

imageMarach Garang Athian (male, mid-twenties)

Arab/Muslim name: Abdul Fadl Abdullah Ash-Sharif [“slave of Fadl Abdullah Ash-Sharif”]

Liberated: March 2013

I was captured when I was about 12 years old, in 2001.  There was fighting in my village, Wakabil, and I was taken by the raiders.  I remember seeing a dead body lying on the ground as I was taken away.

When we arrived in the North, the raiders divided us up.  I went to live in Baba Noussa in Kordofan state, with a man named Fadl Abdullah Ash-Sharif.  He made me his son.  I didn’t like that, but there was no way to resist.  He made me work, selling water from house to house in town from his donkey cart.  Fadl was a bad man.  He would beat me if he thought I didn’t feed the donkey enough, or if I didn’t make enough money selling water.

I slept alone in a rakuba [hut] made from millet cane.  Other Dinka slaves worked in Fadl’s fields, but I didn’t see them very often.  I would talk to them when I brought them water.  They were kind people.

Fadl had seven children and two wives.  The children were kind to me but the wives often didn’t give me enough food.

I learned to speak Arabic, but I had no time to learn Islam because of my work.  In the South, my family was Christian, but there was no church nearby for us to attend.

I was brought back to the South by the slave retriever.  He came to Fadl’s house and talked to him.  After they talked, they called me in to join them.  Fadl asked me, “Do you want to go with this man?” I said yes, because I wanted to go home.  At first, Fadl seemed to refuse, but he eventually agreed.

I sometimes thought I might get to come back to the South, but I wasn’t sure.  I’m so happy to be here.  I don’t know where my parents are, but I will look for them.  I will work farming peanuts.  I want to become a Catholic Christian.  I thank you so much, and I thank the slave retriever who brought us here from far away.  In the name of Jesus, thank you.

Thank you for helping to free Marach!  Help CSI bring freedom to more people enslaved in North Sudan by donating at our website.

May 10, 2013
Bol Athian Bol (Liberated March 2013)

Bol Athian Bol (male, middle-aged)
Arab/Muslim name: Gamardiin
Liberated: March 2013 


I don’t remember exactly when I was captured. It was sometime in the late 1980s. There was fighting in Warawar between [Sudanese President] Omar Bashir’s people and the SPLA. The SPLA fled, and then the soldiers came and burned down the houses and took the people. I was a young man.

The soldiers came in cars, and the murahileen came on camels and horses. They loaded up the cars with goods from the town, and tied up the people and put them on the horses. I was captured by a man named Babakir and put on a horse and taken to Baba Noussa in Kordofan.

Babakir made me work as a farmer in the cattle camps. He assigned an overseer to me. They were both bad men. They made me work from sunup to sundown, and often beat me. Once, I tried to escape. They caught me and tortured me, cutting deep into my ankles with knives. I was terrified – I thought they were going to saw my feet off. [Massive scars on the ankles are visible.]

Babakir gave me a Muslim name, Gamardiin, and told me I had to be a Muslim. He forced me to learn the Qur’an and Arabic. I didn’t like it, but he threatened to kill me if I refused. I know the Qur’an, and I read Arabic. [He recites from the Qur’an for the interviewers, and reads a sentence in Arabic written by them.] Babakir brought in a special teacher for me and the other slaves. The teacher would beat us if we didn’t learn.

I studied the Qur’an for six years. They told me, “After you have learned the Qur’an, you are no longer a southerner. You are no longer a Dinka. You are a Muslim. You are our son.”

After that, I was given a slave woman as a wife. She lived with me for some years. Her name was Abuk, and her Muslim name was Amouna. We had two sons – Garang, and Deng. I didn’t give them Arab or Muslim names, because they were my children.

Eventually, Abuk ran away with the children. I don’t know where they are, or even if they are in the South or still in the North. I was sad, because I loved them, but there was nothing I could do. [Bol is asked why he thinks Abuk left.] I was a slave, and she was a slave. She wanted to be free.

The slave retriever came to our village looking for southerners to take home. He is a good man who cares for people. Babakir came to me and said, “You must go,” and handed me over. I was happy, because I knew I was coming back to South Sudan. I wasn’t sure if I ever would.

Now, I’m getting old. The only job I can do is farming. I will look for my relatives. If I don’t find them, I will stay here and farm.

You can help more people like Bol come home from slavery! Please visit our website, www.csi-usa.org, and make a donation to support our efforts to free the slaves of Sudan and support persecuted Christians around the world.

May 3, 2013
Achol Adach Guet (Liberated March 2013)

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Achol Adach Guet (female, about 29)

Liberated: March 2013

Arab/Muslim name: Mouna

I was born in Malwal Bai.  I was 14 when I was abducted.  I was in my sister’s house in Mabiar Anguei, along the railway.  The murahileen came on horseback.  They took a lot of people, both children and adults.  My sister’s neighbor’s child was executed because she was too exhausted to walk.  The raiders killed another child and an old man for the same reason.  They were either beaten to death or their throats were slit.  Three young men who tried to run away were shot and killed as they ran.  I saw this with my own eyes.

It took us three days to reach the north.  When we arrived, we were divided up.  A man named Maduba Adam from Mowglid took me.  He used me as a wife.  He did not ask me what I wanted.  I had five children from him.  He did not treat me well.  He hit me all the time.

Maduba had a wife, named Fatima.  She didn’t like me.  She insulted me, calling me “jengai” [a racial epithet].  I had to do everything in the house while she sat around.

Maduba wanted me to be a Muslim.  He and his wife and brothers taught me Arabic, and the Qur’an. [Achol recites a sura from the Qu’ran for the interviewers, and converses with them in formal Arabic.]  I am a Muslim, and I will continue in Islam.  But I will not go back to the North.  They beat people and insult people there.  I don’t want to go back.

A year ago, I tried to escape.  I heard that South Sudan was independent, and I was sick of always being beaten.  I tried to escape with another female slave in Maduba’s house, but we were caught, and Maduba tried to kill me by slitting my throat.  He cut my throat deeply. [Massive scarring on the throat is visible.] I screamed for help and lost consciousness, and the neighbors and the local authorities came and rescued me.  They took me to the health center.  The slave retriever found me there.

I wanted to take my children to South Sudan, but they remained behind.  So did the woman who tried to run away with me.  I told the slave retriever about my children.  He told me, “It’s not possible to bring them now, but I will try to get them later.” Their names are Hamad, Gadija, Kaltouma, Fanna and Ali – two boys and three girls.  I’m not sure if I will see them again.

Help us bring Achol’s children home!  Please give today at www.csi-usa.org.

April 19, 2013
Athian Athian Bol and Garang (Liberated March 2013)

Athian Athian Bol (male, middle-aged) and Garang Athian Athian (male, 8)

Liberated: March 2013

Athian: I was captured in 1987.  I was taking my cows to sell in Rum Aker.  Before I entered the town, the murahileenfound me and took me and my cows.

In the North, I lived in Abu Jaber, working as a farm laborer for a man named Adam Boro.  He was only kind to me if I worked from morning to evening.  I was a Christian before, but in the North I was forced to become a Muslim.  I was renamed Mohammad Nouf.

This is my son, Garang.  He was born in 2005.  His mother was also a slave, named Agol Wach.  Adam Boro gave her to me.  Adam Boro was not kind to Garang.  He would beat him up if he refused to run errands.

One Saturday, I learned that the slave retriever was in a nearby town name Gura.  I decided to run away with Garang to find him.  Agol didn’t know we were leaving.  She was away tending the sheep, and there was no time to tell her.  I couldn’t risk losing the chance.

I left because I was in slavery, and working without pay.  But I was afraid.  I would have been killed if we were caught.  Garang might have been too.

The journey south was not easy for Garang.  At times there was not enough water or food.  He has become sick with a cough.

I want to see Agol again.  I need her.  If there is a way she can be brought home, I want that.  The slave retriever knows about her, and has promised to find her if he can.

Here in the South, I will go to where I was born: Man Tiout.  I will try to be a farmer there.

I’m very happy to be in the South.  I will not be enslaved again!

Help us find Garang’s mother!  Please consider donating to CSI”s work.

April 19, 2013
Adhel Atak Bol (Liberated March 2013)

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Adhel Atak Bol (female, about fifteen)

Muslim/Arab name: Hawa

Liberated: March 2013

I was captured in Ariath in 2001.  My home village is Malek Allel.  I had gone to Ariath with two of my mother’s relatives to sell goods.  They ran away when the raiders came.  Four other people were taken with me.  The Arabs put the children on horses, but tied up the adults in a line and made them walk.  After a while, two of the adults became totally exhausted.  They said, “Either kill us or put us on a horse.  We cannot walk anymore.” So the Arabs cut their throats.  One of them said to the rest of us, “Do you want to stay in the South like them?”

I was taken to Dar Afat to live with my master Mohammad Adallahi.  He was a bad man.  He sent me to the well to collect water even when it was hot, and the sand was burning and I had no shoes.  He beat me with a stick if I asked for shoes.  He made me call him “father.”

Mohammad had eighteen children and five wives.  His boys raped me, though he did not know it.  The women were always making me cook for them.

Before the slave retriever came to take me, one of Mohammad’s wives told me that I was to be circumcised.  She said, “You will be clean.  You will be part of us.  You will be our child.” I did not believe her.

I thought about running away at night to escape the circumcision, but I was afraid.  I told one of the master’s children what I was thinking, and he told the master.  They punished me by keeping me inside the house for a week, and giving me no food for four days.  I was so scared they would kill me.  I spent the whole first day crying.

In October 2012, five teenage Dinka slaves had run away.  They were caught in Meiram and taken back.  They were taken to a rubbish heap, where their throats were cut.  Mohammad took me to see their bodies. I remember there was a lot of blood.  He pointed at them and said, “You will follow these people!” The boys had been slaves of one of Mohammad’s neighbors.  Their names were Garang, Deng, Athian, Bol and Bol.

After that, in February 2013, before I was to be circumcised, I was sent to the market to fetch something.  A truck full of Dinka people passed me by on the road and then stopped.  The slave retriever got out of the truck and asked me, “Are you a Dinka?” I said yes.  He said, “Get in the truck!” and I did. 

The slave retriever brought me here.  He is a good man, and gave us lots of bread on the journey.  I don’t know if Mohammad knows where I went.

I don’t know if I’d recognize my parents.  My mother’s name is Adut Atak Garang.  I want to work, and I want to go to school.  I’m very happy to be in the South.  Here, I will never be called “jengai” again.

Adhel was spared a terrible fate at the hands of her slave masters, but many people remain trapped in slavery in Sudan.  Please help us set them free!

April 12, 2013
Charles Jacobs: “Silence As the Christians Die”

Dr. Charles Jacobs

In this powerful piece for the Jewish Advocate, Jewish human rights activist Dr. Charles Jacobs cites CSI’s Genocide Warning for religious minorities in the Middle East, and examines the reasons for the West’s silence on this issue:

Why is the West so shamefully silent in the face of the onslaught against Christian peoples and communities throughout the Islamic realm?

If the reasons for this are not understood - and if the silence continues -
we are almost sure to witness bloody religious/ ethnic “cleansings,” if not
actual genocides.

The Syrian Christians in Damascus, whose church has just been bombed by
anti-Bashar al-Assad rebels, know their community will be wiped out if Assad
is toppled. The Christian Copts in Egypt can see what the Salafists have in
store for them as the Muslim Brotherhood assumes more and more control. The
Copts’ daughters are already being raped, their priests beaten, their
churches set aflame. From Nigeria to Malaysia, from Pakistan to Iraq, from
Uzbekistan to Tanzania, Christians are arrested, harassed and threatened.
Murder is in the air.

Some in the West see what is coming. The Middle East Forum recently launched a monthly update on Christian persecution in Islamic lands. Last year, Christian Solidarity International (CSI) issued a “genocide warning” concerning the endangered non-Muslim minorities (mostly Christians) in North Africa and the broader Islamic Middle East. John Eibner, President of CSI’s USA branch, asked President Barack Obama to speak out on behalf of the endangered Christians.

Obama has not spoken out. But neither have the “human rights” community and
other “caring and compassionate” people who endlessly talk about social justice. And sadly, neither have Christian pastors and priests. Why are both the left and the Christians abandoning these people to their fate? I can see 10 reasons.

The left’s silence

1. Crime by non-Westerners distracts from the left’s message. For many Western progressives, guilt over past Western crimes of colonialism and slavery narrows their focus to horrors committed by Westerners. This enables them to cast themselves as “the good whites” and be exonerated of Western sin. Apartheid committed by South African whites moved them greatly; to protest Arab/Muslim attacks today on Christians would distract from their message and blunt their purpose.

2. Christians cannot be seen as victims.

Progressives perseverate on the notion that Christian missionaries were an arm of Western colonialists, and tricked Asian and African natives with religious mumbo jumbo. Also uppermost in their minds: Christians allowed -and Christian teachings abetted - Hitler’s genocide of Europe’s Jews. The progressives’ history, however, omits centuries of Islamic conquest (by the sword, not the work of missionaries), slaughter, and enslavement of pagans and subjugation of Jewish and Christian communities - which, by the way, preceded Islam in Egypt and of course Israel. Few progressives ever understood that “the tragedy of Sudan” was a murderous anti-Christian (and anti-tribalist) jihad.

3. Pointing to crimes by one’s adversaries hinders “peace.”

Apart from their incomplete and biased view of history, progressives have a PC/therapeutic view of peacemaking: Discussion of Islamist human-rights crimes is barred as “unhelpful” at best and “racist” at worst. To make peace, their theory goes, we must appease and not offend “the other,” and we must think of our adversaries as no different from ourselves. One should not describe cultures that wish only to dominate, encourage men to rape, and force others to reject their own religious faiths. In other words, progressives would object to reporting on what is happening to the Christians in the Muslim world.

4. Many progressives see themselves in a culture war with Christians.

Many progressives may not wish to help persecuted Christians in the Middle East and in Asia because they are at war with Western Christians here over such things as gay marriage, women’s clergy inequality, and abortion. Why help your “enemies?”

Christians’ silence

5. Ignorance, which is sometimes willful.

For the sake of peaceful relations, the media (see “progressives” above) fails to fully inform Christians about Christian suffering at the hands of Muslim radicals. Christian pastors, some of whom have been told by their Muslim “dialogue partners” that any such talk threatens to harm interfaith harmony here, opt for a similar silence. The Diocese of Worcester recently cancelled a talk on Christian persecution by renowned scholar Robert Spencer of JihadWatch.org for precisely that reason.

6. Fear of doing further harm.

The Christian communities in the Islamic realm are effectively hostages. Popes and preachers have known for centuries that Western agitation for Christian rights under - and protection from - their Muslim overlords pose threats to the very lives of the people they wish to help.

7. Christians are not a “people.”

Christians here don’t identify with other practitioners of their faith as “family” - in the way, for example, that Jews do. Recently, Christian students at Gordon College, a Christian school on the North Shore, explained to me that unlike the Jews who mobilized throughout all their communities when one Jew - Gilad Shallit - was kidnapped, Christians are not “a family like the Jews who all come from Abraham and who carry his blood.” (I suggested that the global jihad might cure them of this viewpoint - that their fate was tied now to all Christians.)

8. Few available victims as spokespeople.

When the American Anti-Slavery Group organized mass American support for freeing the slaves of Sudan, our effort was helped immeasurably by escaped slaves who told their personal stories eloquently in English at American churches, synagogues and on campuses. Without such powerful voices here, awakening and mobilizing the Christians - and all Americans - will be much more difficult.

9. Christians cut off from their history

In the American psyche, as Henry Ford suggested, “history is bunk.” Among American Christians there is not much interest in keeping foreign, ancient Christian communities alive, even the cradles of Christian civilization. In Bethlehem, Christians are disappearing at an alarming rate due to Arab/Islamist pressure, with no audible protest in the West.

10. Christian Zionists are otherwise occupied.

Christian Zionists know more than most about Christian suffering under the Islamists. But, strange as it may seem to us Jews, they are motivated overwhelmingly by the duty they feel toward the Jewish people. They have not been convinced that mobilizing here for their own Christian brethren in the Middle East would do more for Israel (I believe it just might) than continuing to “just” be the amazing Zionists they are.

Eibner put it this way in his letter to President Obama: “At the Holocaust Museum, Mr. President, you repeated a truth of which American policymakers must never lose sight: “Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America.”

Americans of all political stripes and religious denominations need to remind ourselves of whom we are - and ask ourselves whom we would be if we leave the Christians to what so clearly seems a terrible, terrible fate.

Charles Jacobs

Follow me on Twitter: <http://twitter.com/#!/drcharlesjacobs>
@DrCharlesJacobs

—-

Please add your voice to Dr. Jacobs’!

Sign CSI’s petition to President Obama, asking him to make the survival of Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East a policy priority!

Learn more about CSI’s Genocide Warning.

February 8, 2013
Adhieu Akeen Anou (Liberated June 2012)

Adhieu Akeen AnouAdhieu Akeen Anou (female, about 40 years old)

Muslim name: Alima

Liberated: June 2012

I was captured in Eban in 1998.  There was a raid on the village.  My house was burned, and my husband and I tried to run.  He  was shot dead, and I was taken with my five children – two daughters and three sons.

I was held in Meiram, in Darfur North, by a man named Abakir.  He had five other Dinka slaves. My job was to grind grain and fill 200-liter oil drums with water.  If I managed to fill only two and left one unfilled, he would beat me and force me to sleep with his donkeys.

Sometimes at night he would rape me.  I had two children with him.  They both died before the age of two – one of diarrhea and one of malnutrition.  Abakir called our children “jengai” [a racial epithet].

Abakir had a wife named Sarah.  She was unkind, and would call me “jengai” and beat me.  One day I had to fill the three drums of water.  After I filled the first two, I felt sick and lay down on the floor.  Sarah came in and yelled at me. “You dirty Dinka!” she screamed.  Then she took a machete and hacked at my hand with it.  I lost the use of my left middle finger.

Once I tried to escape, but I was caught, and beaten very badly on the back.  Afterwards, the other slaves tried to help me; they made  cuts in my back to try to alleviate the swelling.  I was too afraid to try to escape again.

I was not allowed to practice my religion or go to church.  We were all forced to pray as Muslims.    The Dinka women who were taken as young girls were circumcised.

The slave retriever found me at the well with the other female slaves and took us with him.  The retriever also found my two daughters.  I don’t know where my sons are.

I felt very happy when I crossed the border into South Sudan.  I can see this is a good, peaceful place, where the sick are taken care of and where we can work and eat.   I will leave soon to search for my relatives.

I’m just very happy.  You are all like my brothers.

January 11, 2013
Dut Yak Kuany (Liberated: June 2012)

Dut Yak KuanyDut Yak Kuany (male, approximately 15 years old)
Muslim name:
Liberated:
June 2012

I don’t remember my hometown in the South or my parents.  My only memory is of Amdurab, where I lived with an Arab named Adit Allah.  He was my master.

Adit Allah was not a kind man.  He used to beat me a lot; I cannot count how many times.  I have scars on my forehead and on my legs from the beatings.  The scar on my leg is one month old.

Adit Allah had a wife named Alima and two children.  Adit Allah told me I was also his son, and made me call him father.  But I knew I was different because my skin color was different from the other children, and because Adit Allah treated me differently from the other children.

His other children went to school and were never beaten.  I did not go to school, and was beaten often.  Adit Allah and his children slept inside.  I slept on the ground, either outside or in a

tikkul. When the rest of the family ate, they sent me away.  When they finished, they called me back to eat.  If there were no leftovers, I went hungry.

Adit Allah was a Muslim, and made me pray with him.  I remember many of the prayers, like “Allahu akbar.”

The slave retriever found me while I was looking after the goats.  He came and talked to me, and told me he would take me home. So I followed him. I don’t want to go back to Adit Allah.

Please Consider a Giving a Small Donation to Help Us Free More People Like Dut, Give  HERE

December 21, 2012
Atok Piol Akech (Liberated Sep. 2012)

Atok Piol AkechAtok Piol Akech – male, 19-20 years old

Muslim name: Abdullah Hussein

Liberated: September 2012

I was about seven years old when I was captured.  I remember the South.  I am from Malit.

My master was named Hussein.  He made me work as a cattlekeeper.  Once, I lost a cow.  Hussein said, “I will give you time to look for it.” I looked for three days, but I could not find it.  When I returned home without it, Hussein said, “This is your first warning,” and shot me in the ankle. [Massive scarring is visible.]

He told me, “You will lose your life if it happens again.”

My wound was treated with salt and warm water.


Learn More About Christian Solidarity International’s Slave Redemption Program HERE


December 15, 2012
Garang Garang Door (Liberated June 2012)

Garang Garang DoorGarang Garang Door (male, approximately 26 years old)
Liberated:
June 2012
Muslim Name:
Abdullah AbdulRahman

I was captured in 1998.  I was very small.  I don’t remember the name of my home village, but when I try to remember the past before I was captured, the name “Rumanyel” comes to my mind.  

The raiders came early in the morning, riding horses and camels.  They attacked the village, killed all the young men and hung them from trees.  They tied all the young boys together in a single line.  If anyone was not able to walk, they were killed and cut from the rope.  We walked for seven days.

In the North, we were divided up and each taken away by different masters, in different directions.  A man named Abdulrahman took me to live with him. He was not a good man.  He mistreated me.  He forced me to pray like a Muslim, even though I told him I was a Christian. He  would tie my hands and lash me on the back with a switch.  His children would throw stones at me and call me bad names.

Once, I lost three of Abdulrahman’s cows.  He told me to go look for them, but I couldn’t find them.  So he tried to kill me with a knife.  I stretched out my hand to block the knife, and the blade cut me on my hand.  I still have a scar.

There were three other slaves with Abdulrahman, but I was not allowed to talk to them.  I slept outside with the cows, with no shelter.  I ate what the cows ate.  I pounded grain for the cows to eat and then ate it myself.

For two years, I attended the khalwa [a Quranic school].  I went there at night to be taught, then returned to sleep with the cows.  I tried to refuse to go, but they beat me when I did.  The teachers there taught me that Christians and Jews  are infidels who don’t know the word of God.

Once, the teacher at the school brought me a bucket of water and said, “Drink it.  It’s not normal water.” I asked him, “Why?” and tried to refuse, but he forced me.  It was the water used to wash the words of the Qur’an off the chalkboard.  It tasted bad and smelled bad too.

The slave retriever brought me here.  He is a very good man.  He gave us food on the journey here.  

Now, after I’ve come here, I don’t want to be a Muslim anymore.  I want to be with Christians and Southerners.  Some days ago, I was taught about Christianity by one of the local pastors.  The Christian story is good.  I like the story of Jesus.  He died for many people, not just for himself or for his own family.  He belongs to the whole world, and he doesn’t force people to follow him.

I’m now in freedom.  I will see if my family is here, and I will try to work and cultivate.  I  thank you for what you have done, but I thank God first, that you people came here and did all this.  

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