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Under Siege: The Nuba of Sudan
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Cost CDN$20.00 (for individuals) CDN$30.00 (for institutions)
To order, send a personal cheque or money order to ICCAF. Mark your
envelope "Nuba Video". Include $1.50 for shipping. |
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"Under Siege: The Nuba of Sudan" profiles and documents the specter of the hidden war in the Nuba Mountains, a remote region of central Sudan. The story of war in the Nuba Mountains, and more particularly, the story of the efforts of the Nuba people to resist violent and systematic persecution by the Government of Sudan, is told chiefly by Nuba men and women themselves -- teachers, religious leaders, guerrilla commanders, activists, farmers, and so on -- rather than through external narration.
The video celebrates the extraordinary anthropological and cultural and roots and history of the Nuba people. "Nuba" is a derogatory term meaning "people who can be enslaved" in ancient Egyptian. The Nuba are actually a conglomerate of some 50 different ethnic groups and cultures whose ancestors migrated from various parts of north east Africa (some from West Africa) to Sudan's central mountain region to escape other, slave-raiding, peoples. Some Nuba ethnic groups can be traced to the 8th century BC Kingdom of Kush. Over the centuries these distinct groups developed a common identity as Nuba of which they are fiercely proud. This identity is forged from their common experience of persecution and shaped by the rugged landscape and harsh living conditions of the mountain environment.
Nuba religious leaders explain how Nuba Christians, Muslims and
followers of traditional African religions (sometimes referred to
as "animists") have historically and traditionally lived
together in relative peace and harmony. In the Nuba Mountains, Christians
and Muslims not only tolerate but respect one another and share
in each other's rich religious traditions. Much intermarriage has
taken place and it is common to find Christians and Muslims in the
same family. It is common for Christian prayers to be said at Muslim
ceremonies and vica versa. As one Muslim holy man says, it is the
Islamist government of Sudan, and its particular version of Islam,
that tries to drive Christians and Muslims apart in Sudan.
The video explains how war came to the Nuba Mountains in 1985 and
how it is connected to the civil war in Sudan generally. Sudanese
in the Nuba Mountains and southern Sudan are fighting against Sudanese
government political and economic domination and for their right
of self-determination. The video asserts that the Nuba merely want
to live in peace and security to do what they have always done --
farm their lands, express their cultural traditions and practice
their religions. Instead, they are forced to defend themselves against
a regime that wants Nuba lands for their fertility and the minerals
that lie beneath them, and that despises the peaceful co-existence
of Nuba Muslims and Christians because it undermines the regime's
project to create a uniformly Arab, Muslim state.
The video also puts a "human face" on the war, and describes, through the words of Nuba men and women, the horror and human toll of Sudanese government land and air attacks on towns, villages and farms. Nuba women and men tell how their husbands, wives and children were murdered by government troops. They describe how government soldiers come out from their garrison towns in trucks and tanks and burn entire villages and farms to the ground as well as crops and food stores. They tell how high-flying Antonovs come and drop bombs, including anti-personnel cluster bombs, on schools, clinics, mosques, and churches. The describe the impact of a 10-year blockade on all official humanitarian aid to areas of the Nuba Mountains under control of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, which they regard as their protectors; indeed, SPLA guerrillas are the Nuba -- farmers, teachers, craftsmen, women, and youth who have taken up arms to defend Nuba lands and assert their people's right of self-determination, a right that the Sudanese government flatly and brutally denies.
A Nuba man describes how government soldiers abduct civilians from their villages and fields and take them to what are euphemistically called "peace villages" but what in reality are concentration camps. He describes one incident -- a common occurrence -- in which many young and middle-aged women were taken to the camps and raped repeatedly. Other Nuba narrate how the camps are places where Nuba are taken to be "Arabized", "Islamized", forced into hard labour, forced to fight on the government side against their own people, and severely beaten if they resist.
The video ends with an appeal by the Nuba to the international
community, and to the United States and Canada in particular, to
help stop the "genocide" in the Nuba Mountains and Sudan.
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