SUDAN WATCH: 2023

Sunday, December 31, 2023

South Sudan: Grieving Sudanese confront Swedish oil giant Lundin for its "complicity in grave war crimes"

IN November 2021 the Swedish Prosecution Authority (SPA) charged two executives of Lundin Energy, a Swedish oil exploration and production company, for "complicity in grave war crimes" in Sudan from 1999 to 2003.

Lundin Oil was a key player in war-torn Sudan between 1991 and 2003, when it exited Block 5A. It quit the country fully in 2009, two years before the country split into South Sudan — which holds most of the oil — and Sudan, through which the south's oil is exported.

Military forces from the south were originally charged with providing security around Lundin Oil's assets when the company started operations in 1997, said the SPA, claiming that a militia group allied to the Khartoum government tried to take control of Block 5A, but failed, although its attacks led to "great suffering" among civilians. Read more in four reports below.

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From The Observer, Sweden
By MIRANDA BRYANT in Stockholm
Dated Sunday, 31 December 2023, 05.00 GMT - here is a copy in full:

They attacked us. They displaced us: grieving Sudanese confront Swedish oil giant over their days of slaughter

A historic trial, which will call on 61 witnesses worldwide, is expected to set a precedent for global corporations in foreign jurisdictions

George Tai Kuony George, centre, attends a meeting in Juba, Sudan, with victims of the Lundin Oil’s exploration. Photograph: Handout

Before the arrival of Lundin Oil in the town of Leer, now part of South Sudan, life there was peaceful, says George Tai Kuony. His childhood was that of a “typical village boy”, driving cattle, helping his family and going to school. But in June 1998, when he was 15, armed forces entered the town and changed his life for ever.

He fled, became separated from his family and hid for seven days before he was able to return. “When we got there, Leer wasn’t the town I had left seven days ago,” says the 40-year-old lawyer and human rights defender. “Everything was burned down, everything was destroyed. I could see the bodies of dead people lying in the street.” As a result of the conflict, he lost his father, and later his mother and one sibling.

At the time, he says, the community had no idea why people were fighting. They had never heard of the Swedish oil company. Now, a quarter of a century later, Kuony hopes that he and the other victims will get justice as two former executives of the company go on trial in Stockholm accused of aiding and abetting war crimes in Sudan between 1999 and 2003.

In Sweden’s largest-ever trial, Ian Lundin, a Swede, and Alex Schneiter, who is Swiss, stand accused of asking Sudan’s government to make its army and allied militia responsible for security at one of Lundin Oil’s exploration fields. This led to aerial bombings, civilian killings and the burning of entire villages, according to the prosecution. Both men deny the charges.

The trial, which follows a decade-long investigation, hundreds of interviews and an 80,000-page report by the prosecution, started in September. But its most significant moments are expected in 2024, when 61 witnesses – including victims, Lundin employees, former UN staff and high-profile politicians – are due to appear. They include Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister, who sat on the company’s board for five years until becoming the country’s foreign minister.

Sudanese rebel soldiers march to the front close to newly-developed oil fields in the south of Sudan. Photograph: Reuters

“My life has never been the same,” says Kuony, speaking to the Observer from South Sudan’s capital, Juba, where he now lives. “Oil came to our area: it should have been a blessing. It should have been for the benefit of the community.” Instead, there was “a massacre. They wanted us dead. They wanted us to go away.”

Kuony has been trying to get justice since 2006, when the group unsuccessfully sought redress at a court in Sudan. He hopes the trial, whatever its outcome, will set a new legal precedent for global corporations working in foreign jurisdictions, sending a “very strong message” that they cannot act with impunity. “That one day they will be prosecuted in the same way.”

But the victims have already been dealt a significant blow. Ebony Wade, a legal adviser at Stockholm-based human rights organisation Civil Rights Defenders, said Stockholm district court’s decision in November to separate the plaintiffs’ damage claims from the criminal trial would make it “significantly harder” – if not impossible – to have their cases heard, and would considerably delay the justice process.

While the plaintiffs’ testimonies were still expected to be included in the criminal trial, she said, this could push the civil claims back until the criminal trial was over, which would not be until February 2026. However, May 2024 will be a historic moment: for the first time the court will hear the experiences of plaintiffs and victims from South Sudan.

“It’s incredibly rare for corporate executives to be held accountable for grave human rights violation,” says Wade. “For the first time, the leadership of a multinational company is being put on trial in a European country on allegations that they were complicit in war crimes in the conduct of their business activities.”

She adds: “There are very few opportunities for victims of grave international crimes to seek redress, so in that sense this is an incredibly important trial.”

‘What made me sorry is that people came to the church seeking safety and were not able to get it’: Reverend James Ninrew Dong outside the district court building in Stockholm.

Rev James Ninrew Dong, of the Presbyterian Church in South Sudan, fled Leer after religious buildings were targeted. The priest, who is a witness and a plaintiff in the case, said he felt compelled to testify: “They attacked us. They displaced us. What made me sorry is that people came to the church seeking safety and were not able to get it. They were also displaced.”

For him, the case demonstrates the different standards applied by European companies operating in Africa. “Sweden is the champion of peace in the whole of Europe and this is where the Nobel prize is always done,” he says. “We were surprised to see that some citizens of the same country do not even care and do not even listen to what the history is.”

For the case to finally be in court is a relief, he adds. “Can they do that in Norway? Can they do that in Sweden? Can they do that in any of the European countries? Of course no – the answer is no.”

View original: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/31/sudanese-confront-swedish-oil-giant-over-their-days-of-slaughter

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Related Reports

Sudan Watch - November 20, 2021

'Complicity' in war crimes alleged: Top Lundin Energy executives charged over Sudan legacy

The Swedish Prosecution Authority (SPA) has laid criminal charges, including "complicity in grave war crimes", against Lundin Energy chairman Ian Lundin and director Alex Schneiter, related to the company's legacy operations in Sudan.

Pictured in 2009: The Thar Jath oilfield lies in Block 5A in South Sudan. It was discovered in 2001 before South Sudan's independence and before Lundin Energy sold its stake in the block Photo: AFP/SCANPIX

https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2021/11/complicity-in-war-crimes-alleged-top.html

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Sudan Watch - November 19, 2021

Swedish oil executives charged with complicity in Sudan war crimes

SWEDEN has charged two executives (pictured below) of a Swedish oil exploration and production company for complicity in the military's war crimes in Sudan from 1999 to 2003. Full story here below.

https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2021/11/swedish-oil-executives-charged-with.html

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Sudan Watch - June 04, 2019

Military takeover in Sudan:

A timeline of key events in Sudan’s unfinished revolution

Click on this USAID 2001 Sudan Oil and Gas Concessions Map to see Block 5A in Unity State, South Sudan.

https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2019/06/military-takeover-in-sudan-timeline-of.html

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Sudan: SAF & RSF clash in Nyala Janoub (Nyala Town) S. Darfur 10 killed 13 injured 70 households displaced

From Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM) Sudan
UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) - https://dtm.iom.int/
Early Warning Flash Alert
Dated Sunday, 31 December 2023 - here is a copy in full including map:

DTM Sudan Flash Alert: Conflict in Nyala Janoub (Nyala Town), South Darfur

DTM Sudan's Early Warning Flash Alerts provide immediate updates on incidents and sudden displacement in Sudan. These Flash Alerts aim to notify humanitarian partners of sudden events where DTM's Emergency Event Tracking (EET) may subsequently take place.

Update Fifteen: 31 December 2023

On 29 December 2023, armed clashed renewed between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Nyala Town of Nyala Janoub locality, South Darfur. Clashes were reported in As Salam neighborhood, in Domaya and Al Mawashi markets and on Domaya bridge. As a result of the violence, 10 individuals were killed, and 13 others were injured. Felid teams reported that approximately 70 households were displaced to As Salam and Otash IDP Camps. The situation remains tense and unpredictable. DTM is monitoring the situation closely and will provide further information on displacement and population mobility across Sudan, on a monthly basis, via its Monthly Displacement Overview.

Disclaimer: Due to the current circumstances, the DTM network is relying on remote interviews with key informants and further verification is not possible at this time.

*DTM Sudan Flash Alerts provide an initial estimation of affected population figures gathered from field reports. All information is therefore pending verification through DTM’s Emergency Event Tracking (EET) and/or registration activities and is not to be used as official figures.

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Sudan: Clashes between SLA-AW & Arab armed group in Gharb Jabal Marrah (Thur Village), Central Dafur

DTM Sudan Flash Alert: Conflict in Gharb Jabal Marrah (Thur Village), Central Dafur

Update One: 31 December 2023

On 24 December 2023, clashes erupted between the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA – Abdelwahid) and an Arab armed group in Thur village of Gharb Jabal Marrah locality, Central Darfur. Field teams reported that approximately 50 households were displaced from Nertiti Town to Golo village of Gharb Jabal Marrah locality. The situation remains tense and unpredictable. DTM is monitoring the situation closely and will provide further information on displacement and population mobility across Sudan, on a monthly basis, via its Monthly Displacement Overview.

Disclaimer: Due to the current circumstances, the DTM network is relying on remote interviews with key informants and further verification is not possible at this time.

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Saturday, December 30, 2023

Sudan: Survivors give harrowing testimony of Darfur’s year of hell. There’s nobody in El Geneina.

“A country of 46 million people is heading rapidly towards collapse, with very little attention from the outside world,” says Toby Harward, the UN’s deputy humanitarian coordinator for Sudan. “While acknowledging other crises elsewhere in the world right now, the scale of this crisis is unmatched, and it will have significant ramifications for the region and beyond.”

Read more from The Guardian, UK

By FRED HARTER
Supported by the guardian.org
Dated Saturday, 30 December 2023; 13.04 GMT UK - here is a copy in full:

‘They told us – you are slaves’: survivors give harrowing testimony of Darfur’s year of hell

With the war in Sudan poised to escalate and the humanitarian crisis growing, traumatised survivors of a blood-drenched summer in West Darfur tell of their ordeal

There’s nobody in El Geneina. It’s ghostly quiet. It’s horrific to see areas once full of life now totally empty -Aid worker

We could hear gunfire for two months but our commanders told us it was a tribal conflict and not for us to intervene -Soldier at Ardamata garrison

A group in Wad Madani, in south-eastern Sudan, rally in support of Sudan's army in December, as the war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces continues and refugees flee Darfur in western Sudan. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Gamar al-Deen was visiting a friend when gunmen poured into his neighbourhood on 27 April 2023. “I came back to find they were all dead,” he says. “My mother, my father, uncles, brothers, sisters. I wanted to die myself in that moment.”

Deen, a teacher, lost a dozen members of his family that day. Several of his neighbours were killed too. At his friend’s during the carnage, he saw a group of fighters strip a woman naked and then rape her in the street. “They told us, ‘This area belongs to us, not you, you are slaves,’” he says.

The attack was one of many by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary organisation, and allied Arab militiamen in El Geneina, capital of Sudan’s West Darfur region, between mid-April and mid-June. Their fighters carried out almost daily raids against areas of the city populated by the Masalit, an African ethnic group, according to former residents.

Gamar al-Deen, a teacher in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, lost a dozen family members on 27 April 2023 in an attack carried out by RSF paramilitaries

The attacks happened as the world’s attention was focused on fighting 700 miles away in the capital, Khartoum, as foreign governments launched frantic airlifts to evacuate their citizens. The scale of the tragedy unfolding in Darfur, a region ravaged by 20 years of genocidal violence, would only begin to emerge weeks later.

Sometimes the attacks were targeted, as the militiamen hunted down educated Masalits on kill lists. Mostly they were not. Masalit men and boys were accused of being fighters and summarily shot. Women and girls were killed. Women were raped near corpses.

Mahmoud Adam, a former interpreter with the African Union’s Darfur peacekeeping force, which left at the end of 2020, lived close to an RSF base in the city. He said Arab militia would arrive most mornings on horses and motorbikes before heading out to launch attacks on Masalit neighbours.

“For two months, this was their routine,” says Adam. “I would hear them talking about the number of people they had killed at the end of each day.”

The attacks started on 24 April, according to residents, just over a week after nationwide fighting erupted between the Sudanese military and the RSF. They culminated in mid-June, after the killing of the governor of West Darfur, a Masalit, which prompted a panicked evacuation of El Geneina’s Masalit residents to neighbouring Chad and the outlying district of Ardamata, home to a large military base.

Thousands of fleeing civilians made easy pickings for RSF fighters and Arab militia, who fired at the crowds and at passing vehicles, according to survivors. One witness described “a scene from hell” with dozens of bodies along the roadside and washed up on the banks of a nearby river, some with their hands tied.

The hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières in the Chadian town of Adré received more than 850 patients with bullet, stab and shrapnel wounds between 14 and 17 June.

Sexual violence was a feature of the bloodshed with gunmen rounding up and raping women and girls.

El Geneina once had a mixed population of more than half a million. Today, its Masalit neighbourhoods are deserted. “There’s nobody there, it’s ghostly quiet,” says an aid worker who visited recently. “It is horrific to see areas that used to be bustling, full of life, now totally empty.”

Destruction in El Geneina’s marketplace after fighting between the Sudanese army and the RSF on 29 April 2023

The cycle of violence would repeat itself in early November after the RSF captured the military base in Ardamata, a few miles from El Geneina. The garrison fell amid days of killings and looting. Last month, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the UN’s genocide prevention adviser, warned that Darfur risked becoming a “forgotten crisis”.

Half a million people now live in hastily assembled camps in Chad. Cash-strapped aid agencies are struggling to respond: the refugees do not have enough mosquito nets, blankets or water. About 175,000 are living in grass huts they weaved themselves.

A Sudanese refugee builds a grass hut in the border town of Adré, eastern Chad, where about 175,000 displaced people live in similar makeshift huts

“Nearly every person who crossed the border has some sort of trauma,” says Eric Kwakya, a psychologist with the International Rescue Committee. “They have seen terrible things.”

Sherif al-Deen, a social worker, was drinking coffee in an El Geneina marketplace when RSF fighters and Arab militia first attacked on 24 April. He raced home, narrowly avoiding bullets ricocheting through the streets. He spent the next seven weeks volunteering at a clinic, collecting the wounded and dead from around the city with a team of volunteers. Bodies were wrapped in blankets and loaded on to donkey carts.

Sherif al-Deen, a social worker, risked his life to help collect the wounded and dead

Sherif saw a group of Arab fighters fire on a crowd with a machine gun, killing eight. Several of his colleagues were shot. “It was very dangerous work, but I had to do it for my people,” he says.

Burying the dead carried risks. To avoid being targeted by snipers, mourners held clandestine funerals for their loved ones at night, says Abdulmonim Adam, a lawyer and human rights monitor, who attended a dozen night burials between April and June.

At one funeral, the mourners came under fire and had to abandon the bodies beside half-dug graves. “If they see you burying the dead – if they see even the flash of a torch – they will kill you,” he says.

One of the deadliest attacks came on 12 and 13 May. At least 280 people were killed over those two days, according to the Sudan Doctors’ Trade Union.

Sara Mohamed* described gunmen looting her home on 12 May. During the attack, they shot her neighbour’s 10-year-old daughter. “I rushed to hold her, to stop the bleeding, but she died in my arms,” she says.

Another young girl was wounded, and a woman was shot through the stomach. When the militia returned a few hours later, they shot Mohamed’s father and burned down her home.

The massacre unfolded in stages over several weeks. Throughout the bloodshed, the Sudanese garrison at Ardamata’s military base did not venture beyond its blast walls. “We could hear gunfire for two months,” says one soldier. “But our commanders told us it was a tribal conflict, that it was not for us to intervene.”

People trying to escape the violence in West Darfur cross the border into Adré, Chad, in August 2023

Mohamed and another woman interviewed by the Guardian were raped during the violence. Mohamed was gang-raped at knifepoint. The second woman was abducted off the street by a group of men, who covered her head and bundled her into a car. It was a targeted attack. “They called me by my name,” she says. “They said, ‘We know you are writing about the RSF on Facebook.’” Eventually she was driven back to El Geneina and dumped outside a clinic, hands still tied behind her back.

‘If they see you burying the dead they will kill you’: Abdulmonim Adam, a lawyer and human rights monitor who attended a dozen secret night-time burials

That was not the end of her ordeal. A few days later, as she fled to Chad, her vehicle was stopped by a group of armed Arab villagers. They shot the car’s two male occupants. Then two of the villagers took turns raping her and the other female passenger, a 13-year-old girl, beneath a tree.

One of the attackers was middle-aged; the other looked about 18. “I heard the man talking about how happy he was to rape such a young girl,” she says.

She still receives threatening social media messages from unidentified men in El Geneina. A recent voice note sent on WhatsApp said: “We will find you in Chad. You are a slut. Whenever you come back to Sudan, we will do what we want with you.”

Six months on, Sudan’s war is poised to escalate. Having captured most of Darfur, the RSF appears to be cementing its grip over Khartoum. This month, the paramilitaries took Wad Madani, the country’s second city, which had been hosting 500,000 refugees from Khartoum and serving as a logistics hub for aid agencies.

Close to 7 million people have been uprooted across Sudan, the world’s biggest displacement crisis. More than half the population need aid, and 3.5 million children under five are malnourished.

Sudanese refugees wait for UN World Food Programme food distribution in Adré

The international response to the crisis in Darfur has been “completely absent”, says Cameron Hudson, a former White House official. Hudson is critical of US-led attempts to mediate an “elite deal” between the RSF and the Sudanese military. “The US is worried the RSF won’t keep showing up if it holds them responsible for their atrocities and introduces sanctions,” he says. “They are holding the US government hostage.”

Meanwhile, among the Sudanese refugees camping in the desert in Chad, unease is growing. “Even here, I do not feel safe,” says Gamar al-Deen, the teacher.

* Name has been changed to protect identity

Rape, murder, looting: massacre in Ardamata is the latest chapter in Darfur’s horror story Read more

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

View original: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/dec/30/survivors-give-harrowing-testimony-of-darfur-sudan-year-of-hell

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