
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 29, 1995                   TAG: 9503290047
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: CHARLES M. GOOD
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SUDAN IS A PLACE OF MISERY IN NEED OF SOLUTIONS

Few countries have experienced as much human suffering and political conflict as Sudan, Africa's largest country. For 30 of the last 40 years, since winning independence from Great Britain, the Sudan has been a divided state wracked by civil war, gross abuse of human rights, famine and genocide.

Unending war, orchestrated by the military government in Khartoum and the rebel factions in south Sudan, has displaced 5 million Sudanese - a fifth of the population.

Approximately 3 million people, virtually all non-Muslim, have been forced into wretched camps for displaced persons near Khartoum. Food, water and clothing are used as controls. Arabic and Islam are imposed. Fear is palpable.

The crisis in Sudan is complicated by its cultural, ethnic and religious diversity, spread across deserts, savanna grassland and tropical forest. Most Sudanese speak Arabic and at least one of the country's 575 other languages.

Islam has predominated since the 10th century, although Christianity arrived 600 years earlier from Egypt. A localized rebirth of Christianity occurred in the 20th century as missionaries from Europe and America established churches, schools and health services among the African peoples of the vast, underdeveloped south.

A police state, the Sudanese government is dominated by the National Islamic Front, a radical faction that brooks no opposition. The highly educated leaders have also imposed an Islamic penal code in a campaign to enforce political conformity, "purify" personal and social behavior and stem the tide of what is perceived as moral depravity from the West. The penal code allows for lashings, imprisonment, amputation and stoning to death.

One million people have been killed in the last decade. Thousands of others, children and women especially, have died from hunger, exposure and abandonment. Sudan's war has no "good guys." All sides have been condemned for the summary execution of prisoners of war, atrocities against civilians and the manipulation of food aid for military ends. The United Nations/European Community Humanitarian Organization spends $7 million a day to airlift relief supplies into south Sudan.

Previous peace efforts have all failed. The radical Khartoum regime is determined to Islamize all Sudan's non-Muslim peoples, by force if necessary. It has interfered with UN observers and withdrawn from negotiations with five neighboring states that attempted to broker an end to the conflict.

The Virginia Interfaith Coalition for Sudan is sponsoring a workshop on Sudan's war and human crisis this weekend at Blacksburg Presbyterian Church. Special guests for "Crisis in Sudan" include Sudanese individuals involved in peace negotiations, specialists in relief work and coalition members who have recently visited the Sudan. The session, which begins Friday at 7:30 p.m. and runs through Sunday, is open to anyone interested in the global implications of the crisis. For information, call 961-3590.

Charles M. Good of Blacksburg, a professor of geography at Virginia Tech, is a member of the Virginia Interfaith Coalition for Sudan.

by CNB