Sir, - Declan Walsh reported (The Irish Times, August 12th) on the bombing by the Sudanese Air Force of Southern Sudanese civilians and the UN and aid agencies which are attempting to assist them. The wording might have made it appear that this bombing campaign had been going on for only the past six weeks. There has been daily bombing somewhere in Southern Sudan for the past 17 years, limited only by the vagaries of the supply of aviation fuel and bombs.
We have been informed of these attacks because the lives of Irish aid workers and other expatriate have been endangered since the Sudanese Government has broken its pledge not to target the UN and other aid agencies. Why have we not been told how the Government of Sudan has maintained a relentless policy of targeting schools, hospitals, churches, market places, relief centres and the farmers on their fields? The New Sudan Council of Churches and Sudan Infonet regularly publish the details of the latest atrocities. Had they happened anywhere else they would be headline news in all the media. Because it's "just Sudan again", they are ignored unless the news actually concerns somebody from Ireland.
The warplanes are able to fly further than they used to because the oil companies allow them the use of their airstrips and also supply them with the fuel to fly many times more bombing raids than before. The companies' airstrips are also the launch pads for the helicopter gunships which are devastating whole swathes of territory and practising an aerial genocide along the path of the pipeline which draws the oil from the South into the North for refining and on to the Red Sea coast for export. The new revenue from oil sales pays for fresh orders of weapons, vehicles, ammunition and greatly increases the capacity of the northern government to maintain and extend the war against its own citizens.
Since this phase of the civil war began in 1983 over 1.5 million Sudanese have become refugees, over two million have died, over five million are displaced from their homes and unable to farm for themselves or to find work. The figures are so horrific that it is hard to imagine what they really mean in terms of human distress and anguish.
Our representatives in the Dail need constant urging by your readers to keep up the pressure on our Government for the human rights abuses and genocide waged by the Government of the Sudan to be weighed by the governments of the European Union against their own financial and economic advantage. David Andrews saw for himself when he visited Sudan in 1999. His successor in the Department of Foreign Affairs needs to raise his voice on behalf of a traumatised and terrorised people and to ensure that sanctions against Sudan are not lifted until a just and durable peace agreement has been signed. - Yours, etc.,
Brendan Henderson, Chairman, Declan Smith (Rev.), Secretary, Sudan Support Group Ireland, Belgrave Road, Dublin 6.