South Sudanese flee homes amid raids by Ugandan rebels

KHARTOUM, Sudan, May 5, 2005 (AP) -- Thousands of Sudanese have fled their homes in the south to escape increasing and brutal raids on their villages by Ugandan rebels, the United Nations said.

The violence comes as the U.N. is starting to deploy a 10,000-troop peacekeeping force in the south to monitor a peace treaty reached between Sudanese rebels and the government in Khartoum, ending 21 years of civil war.

Though the peacekeepers are not mandated to deal with the Ugandan rebels, they can take action if the LRA interferes with their activities, said peacekeepers spokesman Col. Richard Winchester.

"We would do so (take action) if confronted by the LRA," Winchester told reporters. "We would hope to coordinate our activities with the government of Sudan , because the LRA is a threat to all, to the future of the south and not only to the UNMIS, and we all recognize that."

The Lord's Resistance Army rebels have been battling the Ugandan government for 18 yeas, waging a campaign of murder, rape and abductions in northern Uganda and long using southern Sudan as a base. A U.S. State Department report in February estimated 12,000 people have been killed in the conflict and some 20,000 children kidnapped by LRA rebels.

LRA attacks have spread in recent months along the eastern shores of the Nile River from northern Uganda town of Adjumani across the border into south Sudan , where rebel activity appears to be on the increase in a triangle bounded by the towns of Nimule, Juba and Torit, said UNAMIS spokeswoman Radhia Achouri.

Since the beginning of the year, more than 4,000 people from southern Sudan have traveled to a refugee transit center on the shores of the Nile River in northern Uganda run by the U.N. refugee agency and the Ugandan government, the agency said.

After rebels destroy crops, survivors from villages are driven away by hunger and fear, the UNHCR said. Most arriving at its transit center are in poor condition - our children died on arrival in the past four weeks, the agency said.

Winchester said peacekeepers will begin deploying in the south in 10 days. The force is to monitor the Jan. 9 peace agreement between the government and main southern Sudanese rebel force, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement.

Refugees who have fled to U.N. camps have said rebels from the Lord's Resistance Army swept into their villages, hacking residents to death, burning houses and destroying crops, the United Nations Advance Mission in Sudan said in a statement released Wednesday.

UN advance Mission? to do what? The Christians and Anamists of the southern Sudan will be slowly wiped out.

The UN is an absymal Failure. They have never protected anyone, or ever stopped a conflict.

This is Muslim murderers, from Kartoom, and Now from Uganda.

Gee...Islam at the front of another War! who would have known?

If one (and i mean ONE) American GI was to go and shoot 5 people .....actually let's even make it more morbid. One American soldier decides to HACK TO PIECES 5 people. If that happened the media would be showing that on TV for 2 months straight (like Abu Ghraib). And the United Nations would be ranting and raving (and having special assemblies) to 'investigate atrocities committed by the US armed forces.'

That is if 1 American soldier went loco and killed people.

However if you have REAL atrocities happening, particularly if theyare committed by muslims against Christians/others, the media just keeps mum and the UN somehow decides to delve elsewhere. People are enslaved in the Sudan .....real slavery not silly SnM bondage. People are killed, and those unfortunate enough NOT to be killed see their loved ones getting hacked to death, or are forced to rape them. Imagine a father being forced to rape one of his daughters .....and told if he doesn't he will watch his other 5 kids and wife gangraped and then beheaded. Imagine such a choice. It is easy to say one would never do such a thing, but the choice itself is just mind-boggling (normally when it happens the person just goes into shock .....their body and mind literally shuts down and they go into what can be best termed as suspended animation).

Where is the UN in all this? Where is the media outrage?

If some US soldiers placing panties of the heads of TERRORISTS was so 'atrocious' then how come the rape maiming and slaughter of hundreds of thousands is alright? The media is so hypocritical! They made it seem as if the Abu Ghrain thingimajig was the end of civilization! As if the prisoners were innocent Catholic choir girls who were being imprisoned by an evil vile force! Yet those prisoners were terrorists/insurgents/whatever-you-want-to-call-them. PEople who would have gladly killed Americans, including those stupid journalists who made them seem like 'victims.'

Maybe the only way to solve the Sudan issue (as well as the Congo, where the people who messed up Rwanda fled to and to this day kill and maim ....and no one ever hears of this)...anyways, maybe the way to solve this is to have one US soldier in uniform get photographed in the Sudan, standing near a slave auction. Maybe once the media, and the UN, see a US soldier they will be so 'angered' that they might actually turn a spotlight over there.

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