The Lost Boys of Sudan

Chester United Methodist Church has a fund for the Lost Boys. We have sent them well over $2,000 for school expenses and more recently for their trip back to Sudan. There are about 21 Lost Boys returning to Sudan to see families they have not seen for as much as 17 years. This is a much needed visit as they come out of a survival mode and begin to build a life and new purpose for themselves and their native land, Sudan.

If anyone would like to give a financial gift to this please send it to Chester UMC, 12132 Percival Street, Chester, VA 23831. Make the check out to Chester UMC with a memo "Sudan Lost Boys". They pretty much have their travel expenses paid for (an amazing accomplishment considering the low-paying jobs they have while they are paying their way through college) but will need more to pay their bills (rent, utilities, car insurance, etc.) upon their return. Their jobs do not have vacation time so they will be without pay during those weeks back home.

Sudan accuses Chad of violations

From the BBC:

Sudan has accused neighbouring Chad of violating its airspace and supporting rebels in its western Darfur region.

A Sudanese foreign ministry statement said Chadian airplanes had flown over Sudanese territory without permission on two occasions earlier this month.

Chadian troops allegedly crossed the border several times, stealing cattle.

Chad denies the accusations and last week accused Sudan of using Chadian deserters to fight rebels in Darfur.

In its statement, the Sudanese foreign ministry also accused an unnamed third country of shipping arms and munition to rebels in Darfur.

In an interview with the BBC, Chadian Information Minister Hourmadji Moussa Ndoumgor earlier said Sudan was trying to destabilise his country.

Chadian troops mutinied from their army in September this year and claim to number in the hundreds. They say they want to overthrow their president.

According to Sudan, the Chadians number about 120.

"The weapons they [Sudan's government] are giving to the deserters to fight the Darfur rebels could in the future be used against our government," Mr Ndoumgor told BBC Afrique.

The long border between Sudan and its western neighbour is porous, with a murky mix of rebel groups and armed militia roaming its arid landscape.

The same ethnic groups are found on both sides of the border.

A ceasefire is supposed to be in place in Darfur but the Sudanese army, pro-government Arab militias and black African rebel movements have broken it with regularity.

Some 2m people have fled the conflict in Darfur, with more than 100,000 crossing the border into Chad.

The Shame of Darfur

From The Other Journal:

The calculated savagery of Khartoum’s campaign has been stunning. As Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times reported in February, a document seized by the African Union from a Janjaweed official outlined in chilling detail official government policy. Demanding “execution of all directives from the president of the Republic,” it called upon commanders to “change the demography of Darfur and make it devoid of African tribes.” Dated August 2004, the document encouraged “killing, burning villages and farms, terrorizing people, confiscating property from members of African tribes and forcing them from Darfur.”

Terribly effective, this strategy resulted in near-total ethnic cleansing in the areas in which it occurred, leaving over two and a half million people bereft of sustenance and vulnerable to continuing attacks, with the lives of even more at risk. The only reason violence has abated recently, as noted by Andrew Natsios, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, is that “there are not many villages left to burn down and destroy.”

Read the rest of the article here: