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Don Cheadle
George Clooney
Matt Damon
Brad Pitt
David Pressman
Jerry Weintraub
Drawing upon the voices of cultural leaders to protect and assist the vulnerable, marginalized and displaced.
WASHINGTON -- The Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP) has released new satellite imagery confirming the intentional burning of Um Bartumbu village in Sudan’s conflict-torn border region of South Kordofan. SSP’s latest report, which also includes new eyewitness reports and photos embedded with GPS codes, solves the mystery of an undated cell phone video, which appeared to show a unit of Sudanese forces called the Match Battalion razing an unnamed village.
AGOK, South Sudan -- “I ran because I saw many militias and SAF,” said Malak Miyen, an elderly Ngok Dinka man. “I survived because of God.” Malak was in Abyei town when Sudan government forces and allied militias violently took over the Abyei territory in May 2011, in response to alleged South Sudan army provocation. For over a year, he has been displaced in a town 37 kilometers south of Abyei town called Agok. This was the second time in his life Malak has been forced to flee from his home. The first time was in 2008, when Abyei town was similarly ravaged by fighting.
While many Sudan observers are looking ahead to South Sudan’s first birthday in July, there is another, less auspicious, anniversary to commemorate. Today, June 5, marks one year since the beginning of hostilities in South Kordofan state. The Sudanese Armed Forces, or SAF, and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North, or SPLM-N, have been engaged in combat over the last year; however, a hallmark of the violence has been the SAF’s relentless targeting of civilians, use of indiscriminate bombing, and continued denial of humanitarian aid to devastated and food insecure communities.
The Sudanese government has banned at least four foreign humanitarian agencies from working in the eastern region of the country. The decision last week by the Sudanese Humanitarian Affairs Commission, or HAC, to suspend projects in the deeply impoverished East is yet another example of Khartoum’s continued pattern of obstruction and neglect of peripheral areas. In addition to the recent developments in the East, humanitarian access remains severely hampered in Darfur and has been completed blocked in South Kordofan and Blue Nile.
