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June 18, 2008

Religious freedom body warns of threat to Sudan peace accord

by Cheryl Heckler
Ecumenical News International

OXFORD, OH — The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has issued a warning that a recent outbreak of violence in Sudan’s Abyei region threatens a three-year-old peace accord that gave protection and security to Christians, followers of traditional African religions and some groups of Muslims.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed in 2005 ended a 22-year North-South Civil War that killed more than 2 million people and drove more than 4 million from their homes in one of Africa’s longest conflicts.

In recent weeks, however, government-backed forces have attacked residents in the Abyei region, which lies on the border between Northern and Southern Sudan, driving an estimated 90,000 civilians from their homes, the commission said.

A separate conflict in Sudan’s western Darfur province has led to the deaths of an estimated 200,000 people.

Commission officials accused the Sudanese government of human rights violations in many regions of Sudan against both non-Muslims, and Muslims who dissent from the government’s interpretation of Islam, an observation that has also been made in the recent past by Christian leaders.

“The violence against civilians was reminiscent of the tactics employed by Northern forces both during the North-South civil war and in the Darfur conflict, which the U.S. government has repeatedly termed genocide,” said Michael Cromartie, chairperson of the commission. “The outbreak of fighting underlined that the prospects for a lasting peace in Sudan are in peril.”

Northern and Southern leaders signed an agreement on June 8 to end the violence, allow the civilians who were forced to flee to return to their homes, and establish a joint civilian administration to run the region.

Abyei is a crossroads between North and South and home to rival ethnic groups living on land with rich deposits of oil. The combination of these elements has produced increased violence in recent weeks.

The U.S. commission accused Sudanese President Omar Bashir of ignoring a protocol within the 2005 agreement giving special protection to Abyei’s boundaries, and the commission called on the international community to ensure that the president abides by the agreement.

“Khartoum’s refusal to comply with the CPA [2005 peace accord] up to now in regard to the sensitive border area of Abyei, and the assault by Khartoum’s armed forces that left the town of Abyei in ruins, have threatened a downward spiral toward renewed civil war,” Cromartie said.