Achol Cyer Rehan

I will speak about Jihad, and how it victimizes Southern Sudanese. I have never known freedom. I was born in the war. The war in the Sudan is all about jihad, religion and culture. The rule of jihad is peace or war - your choice... When you accept to become a Muslim you will be at peace. And if you reject Islam then you are at war.

How has Jihad victimized Southern Sudanese women and young girls and men? The Khartoum government has trained the so-called Popular Defense Forces (PDF) - but it is not the people whom they are defending. It is a force sent to Southern Sudan to rape women, to abduct children, and kill men. They slaughter people. If you are a man, they might cut off your male organ and put in your mouth, or they might put metal in the fire and insert it in the human body through anus. If you are a woman, you will be raped. Perhaps if your brother is killed near you, you are crying, and you refuse to be taken captive, your are raped. They might even cut off your breasts. The PDF does a lot of things to the human body.

Small children are sometimes left as orphans, especially one and two-year-olds. They are left behind with no one to care for them. The PDF usually take only children without mothers who are about five-years-old and are useful. They keep them in Sudan as slaves. In Northern, Sudan the people don't care for the Southern Sudanese people. Here is one example: Some years ago, many Southern Sudanese people fled war and famine, and went to the North, looking for protection. But the Southerners were removed from the town, taken to the desert and they called it "refuge". How can you be a refugee in your own country. It is amazing.

Such atrocities against Southern Sudanese are committed because of Jihad. My question is what can one do if you share a country with Muslims. Is it better for you to join their religion, or is it better for you to stand firm with your religion? If you don't surrender and become a Muslim, you are at war. What do you think as a Christians, what do you think as a Human Rights activists? Do you accept that the victims should be made to live under such suffering? The victims are human beings. They want to be free. They want to have basic human rights.

My brother Southern Sudanese [Simon Deng] has given a good speech, and a good picture of jihad. And if the Islamic people continue doing such things, how are we going to stop them? I hear some people denying that the Southern Sudanese are enslaved, while they admit that it is happening to Muslims in Darfur. They need to be reminded that the jihad in Southern Sudan started in 1955, while the one in Darfur started only in 2003. The Southern Sudanese have lost two million people. The Darfuris have lost 75,000 human lives.

I thank you.