The world community hardly needs further evidence of what is occurring
in the oil regions of southern Sudan: all evidence available clearly
reveals that the Khartoum regime is bent on destroying the indigenous
populations in order to provide security for Canadian, European, and
Asian oil exploitation. But the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan
(ECOS) has added to our understanding of the realities on the ground
with a recently released and highly authoritative report, based on
first-hand evidence. Their findings comport all too well with those of
previous reports. “Depopulating Sudan’s Oil Regions” (a report by Diane
deGuzman, edited by Egbert G.Ch. Wesselink, for the European Coalition
on Oil in Sudan) makes terrifyingly clear yet again Khartoum’s genocidal
ambitions. And it demonstrates yet again that companies like Talisman
Energy of Canada, Lundin Petroleum (Sweden), OMV (Austria), Petronas of
Malaysia, and China National Petroleum Corp are deeply complicit in
these ambitions.
Eric Reeves [May 17, 2002]
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063
413-585-3326
ereeves@smith.edu
The report by the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan (available upon
request) is based directly on human rights assessment work completed
earlier this year. The continuities with previous reports are at once
striking and appalling:
“One year after Christian Aid published its report ‘The Scorched Earth,’
and six month after the Canadian ‘Report of an Investigation into Oil
Development, Conflict and Displacement in Western Upper Nile, Sudan’ by
Georgette Gagnon and John Ryle, civilians continue to be forcibly
displaced, villages to be burnt to the ground, and helicopter gunships
still kill women and children in Southern Sudan. Vast areas around the
oil fields are now depopulated; the original Nuer and Dinka population
is displaced and uprooted.”
All too familiarly, the ECOS report found that:
“Government [of Sudan] forces are establishing control over vast areas
by attacking the armed opposition and the civil population; high
altitude bomber planes, helicopter gunships and newly equipped ground
forces kill thousands and uproot hundreds of thousands of people,
successfully depopulating vast areas of land.”
The two human rights assessment teams:
“witnessed the devastation, interviewed the displaced, and saw the
horrific effects of a modern air war against women and children. The
teams confirmed that civilians in [oil concession] Blocks 1, 2 and 5A
have suffered brutal attacks by Government forces and proxy militia’s
between October 2001 and March 2002. Tens of thousands have been driven
from their homes and huddle in swamps, too afraid to return home.”
So how directly are oil companies like Talisman Energy complicit in
this destruction? The ECOS report gives a terribly direct answer:
“1. In October 2001, the Government of the Sudan launched an offensive
in the Southeast of Ruweng County, oil concession Block 2, attacking the
villages between Jukabar and Bal with air raids and ground troops. There
were no SPLA troops in the targeted villages and the Government troops
did not encounter any armed resistance during the operations. The
indigenous population of the region was displaced. Those who survived
now huddle in two areas of swampland in the Northeast and Southeast
corners of their County.
“2. Within a month after the depopulation of the Jukabar/Bal area in
Ruweng county, the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNPOC:
Talisman Energy, Chinese National Petroleum Corporation, Petronas
Carigali, and Sudapet) moved a drilling rig into Pakier, just West of
this area. The timing of GNPOC’s activity suggests that these attacks
were designed to clear the way for an expansion of the oil production
area.”
It is difficult to imagine a more direct connection between civilian
destruction and the presence of Talisman Energy and its partners. These
findings also lend increased credibility to the extraordinary document
now introduced as evidence in a US federal suit against Talisman, in
which Khartoum’s Petroleum Security Division communicates on May 7, 1999
with its Heglig counterpart, in a directive characterized as “very
urgent”:
“In accordance with directives of His Excellency the Minister of Energy
and Mining **and fulfilling the request of the Canadian Company** the
armed forces will conduct cleaning up operations in all villages from
Heglig to Pariang.” [translation obtained by Plaintiffs’ counsel,
emphasis added].
Two days later began the infamous Ruweng County offensive, chronicled
by both the UN Special Rapporteur for Sudan at the time (Dr. Leonardo
Franco), and in even greater detail by the Harker Mission, an assessment
team assembled for the Canadian Foreign Ministry. Both the Harker
Report and the Report of the Special Rapporteur found that the Ruweng
County offensive amounted to a policy of “scorched-earth/cleared earth”
warfare. The Harker Report estimates that the total population of
Ruweng County declined by 50%.
Three years later, the world continues to watch as the same unspeakably
brutal warfare destroys the Dinka and Nuer peoples of the oil regions.
The racial and religious animus defining the attacks on these indigenous
civilians, as well as their means of livelihood, is clear from both the
nature of the warfare, and Khartoum’s publicly announced goals for its
“jihad” against the people of the south. The unmistakable intention is
to destroy the Dinka and Nuer peoples, physically and culturally. This
is genocide.
(Several articles developing these conclusions about the genocidal
nature of Khartoum’s assaults on southern civilians can be found at:
http://www.crimesofwar.org/sudan-mag/sudan-in-discuss.html; Professors
Francis Deng [CUNY and the Brookings Institute], Helen Fein [CUNY], and
Sondra Hale [UCLA] all offer powerful accounts supporting the
characterization “genocide”).
What makes the ECOS report compelling is precisely what has made so
compelling the many previous reports on oil-driven human destruction and
displacement: first-hand interviews with survivors. Here are two
examples offered by the report, showing directly the relation between
the presence of Talisman Energy and its partners and human
displacement:
“Chief Chimum and his people were forcibly displaced from the village
of El Toor seven years ago. Since then, he has been forced out of
Kumagon, Miper, Adiei, Aruch, Panlual, Mankuor and Alel. El Toor,
Kumagon and Miper are now oil drilling sites. All of the other
locations are on the all-weather road linking the Government of the
Sudan garrisons from Heglig to Lieri.”
“Chief Midiing Kuot’s life story is also the saga of oil in Ruweng
County. He was originally from a village near Heglig but the Government
of the Sudan drove all the Southerners away eight years ago. Chief
Midiing took his people east to Kuelmopiny but, as the chief related,
‘The government and Talisman Energy began their expansion eastwards.’
Chief Midiing and his people were forced to flee to Kueldit. Finally,
the massive Government of Sudan air and ground attack in October 2001
drove Chief Midiing’s people out of Kueldit to one of only two corners
of the County still under the control of the Southern Opposition, Beam
Rom (Padit 2).”
What are the tactics that Khartoum’s forces use in clearing land for
Talisman? What is the face of war for the indigenous populations, the
populations that Talisman Energy management continues to insist “don’t
exist”? The ECOS report offers harrowing first-person accounts:
“First helicopter gunships came to the Jukabar/Bal area and scattered
the civilians. As they fled into the tall grass in search of cover,
they flew low enough to part the grass enabling the pilots to spot the
fleeing people. Then, the gunships then fired directly at the people
cowering in the grass. When the Government of Sudan attacked his
village of Kuelmopiny in November 2001, Bol Yout and his family ran into
the bush. Bol said, ‘The gunships flew so low they whipped the grass
apart, exposing my children.’ The gunships came back around, bore down
on his family, and killed three of his eight children—Deng, age 6,
Chol, age 5, and Manjok, age 4. As his children were mowed down, Bol
could see his village going up in smoke.
“‘The helicopter gunships flew so low, I could see the faces of the
pilots,’ stated Chigo Milwal, a former resident of Bal. ‘The gunships
quickly swung around and came back shooting at the people.’ Chigo’s
cousin, Dau Ajiang and his two children were killed during the gunship
attack.”
These are the people Talisman denies have been displaced, denies have
suffered loss, indeed, denies ever existed.
The same compelling accounts emerge from the ECOS assessment work in
Block 5a (Lundin Petroleum [Sweden], OMV [Austria], and Petronas
[Malaysia]). The absolute contempt for the life of Nuer and Dinka
civilians is all too fully captured by additional first-hand narrative
accounts:
“‘They want our land so they can get the oil,’ said Chepak Theaf Kac in
the village of Mayar Luok, near Wicok. ‘They do not want Southerners to
remain on their land.’ Rhoda Nyareak Chany, from Wangrial near
Nhialdiu, lost ten of her relatives during the helicopter gunship attack
on her village. ‘Many little children drowned in the river as they
tried to escape the horsemen,’ Roda explained. ‘The horsemen chased the
people to the river and shot at them as they struggled across with young
children and the elderly. Even pregnant women were not spared.’ Roda
knew two young women, Nylaluak Riek and Nyanhialdiu, who were heavily
pregnant, yet the horsemen still shot them as they fled.”
“Ground forces came from the garrisons at Rier and Bentiu. They burned
and looted the villages. Two women told the team how soldiers snatched
their youngest children from their arms. Nyakoang Duol, age 50, ran
into the bush with her five children when the gunships launched a rocket
attack on her village. She was holding the two youngest children in her
arms when the soldiers caught them. The soldiers yanked the two
children from her arms as Nyakoang pleaded with the soldiers to let them
go. ‘You are too old,’ the soldiers told her. ‘We do not want you.’
However, they did take the time to strip Nyakoang of her clothes before
disappearing with her two youngest children. ‘I have no idea where my
children are,’ Nyakoang told us.”
The children of the south are disappearing—killed, abducted,
displaced, and suffering terribly from Khartoum’s blanket ban on the
delivery of humanitarian aid to the oil regions. And as the children of
southern Sudan disappear, so too does the future of the southern
peoples. Such massive civilian destruction, such concerted efforts to
obliterate culture and livelihood, is nothing less than
genocide—serving most conspicuously the lust for oil profits by
international oil companies.
History has already rendered a judgment on the indifference of the
world to this genocidal destruction; it remains only for those will dare
read the verdict to see how terribly we have failed—and continue to
fail.