New air strikes on civilians in South Kordofan - European Parliament protests - German response lacks clarity

The Sudanese air force bombed three more villages in the South Kordofan province on Monday. One child was killed and two women were wounded, reported the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) on Tuesday in Göttingen. Just one week ago bombs were dropped on two settlements in the Nuba Mountains, killing a 15-year-old girl and injuring three children. Last Thursday three children were killed in an air strike on a village.

The European Parliament passed a resolution last Thursday condemning the attacks by the Sudanese army against the civilian population, as well as the massive human rights abuses and the blockade of emergency aid. Francis Deng, UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, called on the Sudanese government to live up to its obligation to protect the civilian population. "But so far, the German government has failed to speak out clearly," criticized Ulrich Delius of the STP's Africa section. Minister of State Cornelia Pieper released a statement on September 7 expressing great concern over the continued fighting in South Kordofan, but the ongoing human rights abuses were not mentioned, and the SPLM rebel movement was made unilaterally responsible for the fighting.

Three Sudanese members of parliament resigned on Monday in protest. They accused the Sudanese government of overseeing ethnic cleansing, in which 2,132 people have been killed in the Nuba Mountains since the beginning of June 2011. Sudanese vice president Ali Osman Mohamed Taha on Sunday announced the intention to reinforce the Sudanese military operations in the Blue Nile province, which has been the scene of conflicts since August 2011.

"It is high time the international community woke up and made a stronger effort to curtail the rapidly spreading war in the Sudan," said Delius. There are already more than 600,000 civilians in South Kordofan and Blue Nile areas directly affected by the fighting. The "separate peace talks" continually being called only fuel the violence in the region, rather than establishing a lasting peace. "Only a comprehensive clarification of the rights of the sub-Saharan minorities in the Arab-dominated Sudan and an end to the continuous dispute with South Sudan can prevent the proxy wars between Sudan and South Sudan, played out in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile, from going on incessantly."