From: People For Peace
Colleagues Home & Abroad Regional News
BY FR JOACHIM OMOLO OUKO, AJ
NAIROBI-KENYA
THURSDAY, JULY 14, 2011
“It is almost mid-night but I cannot sleep given the present situation”, this was the expression made by El Obeid Catholic Bishop Macram Max Gassis in his letter yesterday ordering missionaries in his diocese to evacuate Nuba Mountains for safety of their lives.
Bishop Gassi/ File photo
In solidarity with Doctor Tom, Sister Angelina, Sister Rosio, Father Ceaser, Father Francis, Father Samuel in Kauda, Brother Isaac, Father Gerald Apostles if Jesus, Bishop Gassis who is still in Europe since the bombardments began in Nuba Mountains in the letter forwarded to People for Peace in Africa Regional News, says he continues to suffer with the people of Nuba Mountains.
“I travelled extensively to bring the plight of our brothers and sisters to the international communities. The evil spirit is let loose to kill, burn, and torture innocent people. The Nuba people continue to suffer innocently”, the bishops emotionally expressed.
The bishop says he has conveyed the fathers and sisters’ dangerous life and the agony of their brothers and sisters in USA, Germany, Spain, France, Slovakia, and Australia, assuring them that he will continue, despite the fact that his heart aches to be the voice of the suffering innocent Nuba.
With a heavy heart the bishop has asked the missionaries in Nuba to evacuate the area soonest possible. The bishop says he has taken this decision because he does not want the missionaries face dangers.
He says he is not asking them to betray their Nuba brothers and sisters but he needs their safe and sound in order to serve them once this devil is cast out. The bishop has sent the missionaries 60 tons of cargo, but may not be able to send more because security of the air company. The bishop wants the missionaries to take his plea very seriously.
Repeating the words of Jesus: “This devil is cast out only by prayers and fasting”, the bishop concludes his letter with inspirational devotion that on the cross with Christ with confidence that there is also resurrection.
Since Bishop Macram Max Gassis was appointed to head the Diocese of El Obeid, Sudan, in 1980s, he has never seen peace. He found a people devastated by a grinding civil war and brutal oppression. Bishop Gassis’s flock had a difficult time getting things like education and clean water.
Yesterday the United Nations said aid workers reported heavy bombing and gunfire in several parts of South Kordofan, including around the state capital Kadugli as recently as Monday.
South Kordofan lies on the border with the newly independent country of South Sudan and has been the site of clashes between government troops from the north and southern-aligned forces.
The Nuba were among the non-Arab northern communities who joined with the southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army, and its political wing, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, during the war.
Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for the atrocities perpetrated in Darfur, is purportedly furious that the people of South Kordafan refuse to acknowledge the recent election of Ahmed Haroun as governor.
Since then a heavy aerial bombardment by government Antonovs, MiG jets and helicopter gunships rocked rebel military strongholds and civilian villages. Photographs collected by Nuba and distributed to reporters recently in Nairobi during the press brief by Nuba communities showed graphic scenes of how bombardments are targeting innocent Nuba people, with some lying in pools of blood.
In a well-publicised recent speech, President Bashir warned once South Sudan secedes, there would be no place for ethnic or cultural diversity in the north, and Islam would be the sole source of law. It means war will continue.
The northerners, who inhabit the country roughly north of 12°N lat. and mainly near the Nile, consist of Arab and Nubian groups; they are Muslim (mostly of the Sunni branch), speak Arabic (the country’s official language), and follow Arab cultural patterns (although only relatively few are descended from the Arabs who emigrated into the region during the 13th-19th cent.).
The southerners, consisting of Nilotic and Sudanic peoples, largely follow traditional religious beliefs, although some are Christian; they practice shifting cultivation or are pastoralists, and most speak Nilotic languages. The leading ethnic groups in the south are the Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Bari, and the non-Nilotic Azande.
The Nuba people reside in one of the most remote and inaccessible places in all of Sudan–the foothills of the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan. At one time the area was considered a place of refuge, bringing together people of many different tongues and backgrounds who were fleeing oppressive governments and slave traders.
As a result, over 100 hundred languages are spoken in the area and are considered Nuba languages, although many of the Nuba also speak Sudanese Arabic, the official language of Sudan. The Nuba Mountains mark the southern border of the sands of the desert and the northern limit of good soils washed down by the Nile River.
The term Nuba is often used to refer to the inhabitants of the Nuba Mountains. The Nuba number 1.5 million. The various Nuba people make up some 90 percent of the population of the area, while the rest are Baggara (cattle herders), mainly Hawazma and Misiriya Arabs. The Baggara moved into the mountains from the west and north around 1800. There is also a smaller minority of Arab traders, the so-called Jellaba.
In the earliest days and for thousands of subsequent years the ancestors of the Nuba probably held the greater part of this country (i.e. what is now known as Kordofan), except the northern most deserts. Beaten back by other races that ruled the Nile banks in successive generations, by tribes from the interior, and finally by the nomad Arabs, the Nuba have now retired to the mountains of southern Kordofan.
The more recent history of the Nuba goes back to the early 16th century at the point when large groups of Juhaina pastoral tribes began to move south-westwards into the plains of northern Kordofan, ultimately confining the Nuba to the region now known as the Nuba Mountains. This great movement coincided with the establishment of the Kingdom of Sennar by Umara Dungas around 1504 AD.
The Nuba peoples seem to have lived traditionally in separate communities, with the exception of the Kingdom of Tegali, which was a relatively powerful settlement; at its peak (during the 18th century) it laid many smaller communities under its tribute. The Tegali Kingdom was founded in the Tegali hills in the extreme north-east, the area nearest to the riverain centres of Islam.
The independence of the Sudan in 1956 accelerated the opening up of the mountains to all winds of change, and catalysed the mobility of the Nuba people towards the urban centres of the Sudan and further to foreign countries. This opening up has also meant that the Nuba Mountains were henceforth open to economic and social intrusion by national and international agents of trade and politics, and to cultural exchange.
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