Diaspora

May 6, 2008 (Pretoria, South Africa NSV )– South African president Thabo Mbeki sent his condolences to South Sudan president Salva Kiir and South Sudanese on Monday following the crash that killed minister of SPLA Affairs Dominic Dim Deng and advisor for South Sudan president and veteran politician Justic Yaac Arop.

"Please accept Your Excellency, on behalf of the government and people of South Africa and indeed on my own behalf, our heartfelt condolences to the government and people of South Sudan following the weekend plane crash in which 21 people [and three crew members] including the Minister of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army Affairs lost their lives,” Mbeki said.

South Africa played a great role in the negotiation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005. Mbeki’s government has since been a key friend and ally of South Sudan. Continue reading »

April 18, 2008 (NSV) - The United States presidential candidate Barack Obama expressed concern on Friday over a report that the Bush administration would remove Sudan from state sponsors of terrorism and normalize relations with Sudan, if Sudan includes peacekeepers from Thailand and Nepal in AU-UN mission.

"I am deeply concerned by reports that the Bush Administration is negotiating a normalization of relations with the Government of Sudan that would include removing it from the list of state sponsors of terrorism,” Senator Barack Obama said in statements published on his campaign website, http://www.barackobama.com. “This would reportedly be in exchange for Khartoum's agreement to allow Thai and Nepalese troops to participate in the joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur.”

The report was given to The New York Times by a U.S. government official opposed to the Bush administration’s position, said The New York Times. Continue reading »

April 14, 2008 (Kitchener, Ont NSV) - Several speakers paid tribute to the late Nuba politician Fr. Philip Abbas Ghaboush at a memorial service in the city of Kitchener last Saturday. Fr. Ghaboush, who died early this year, was remembered as a nationalist and a tireless defender of the rights of the Nuba people.

"Fr. Philip has transcended race, religion, and gender," said Adam Abuteiman, chair of the SPLM Chapter in London, Ontario."He spent over 60 years fighting for the rights of the marginalized people of Sudan."

Dr. Aweja Gafour, a Toronto-based academic from the Nuba Mountains said Fr. Ghaboush’s death was both a painful and joyous occasion. "It is painful that we lost our dear brother and leader, but it's a joy because of what he has done. His spirit is with us,” he said.

Kuku Jagdoul, who delivered the eulogy, said through out Sudan, Fr. Ghaboush was a household name because of his role in speaking out against marginalization. He remembered Fr. Ghaboush as a politician who was willing to explore armed struggle to uplift the Nuba people. Himself a protégé of Fr. Ghaboush, Jagdoul said the late politician was able to appeal across the many Nuba ethnic groups. In addition he said although Fr. Ghaboush was a Christian, he was able to win the support of Muslims in the Nuba Mountains because his message was about justice for everyone.

"Many religions exist in the Nuba Mountains. Islam, Christianity and traditional African religions. Continue reading »

April 9, 2008 (Diaspora NSV ) - A group of Jonglei State citizens, mostly from the Diaspora, have asked the state governor Lt. Gen. Kuol Manyang Juuk to provide an alternative telephone network as Gemtel network doesn't work well.
The group have suggested to the governor to consider bringing either Kenyan Safaricom or Sudan Mobil as alternative since Gemtel network is not delivering communication services as expected.
For details, the petition is produced below:

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To: The Honorable Governor of Jonglei State
Lt. Gen. Kuol Manyang Juuk
Jonglei State, Bor.

Subject: Jonglei State needs a good telecommunication network

Dear Mr. Kuol Manyang, Continue reading »

April 8, 2008 (Nairobi NSV) - Hopes on Kenya’s post-election progress were dampened on Tuesday as opposition leader Raila Odinga suspended its participation in the cabinet talks after it accused Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki of reneging on power sharing agreement reached last week.

The Orange Democratic Movement of Raila Odinga said talks would not be resumed until a 50-50 power sharing agreement was realised.

"This also means that executive power and authority must be shared between the Prime Minister and the President," read a press release, signed by Prof Anyang’ Nyong’o, the party secretary-general,.

Meanwhile, the Party of National Unity, Kibaki’s party, said it was ready for fresh elections if the cabinet talks failed. Continue reading »

April 1, 2008 (New York NSV)—On March 29, many SPLM supporters attending community general meeting in the City of Syracuse turned the meeting venue into an ID photo studio.

Many people had their SPLM ID pictures taken in the basement of St. Vincent de Paul’s multipurpose building where the Sudanese Community meeting was taking place.

Briefing the Syracuse Sudanese Community in the meeting on Saturday, March 29, Chol-Awan Majok, the party’s Secretary General for Syracuse sub-chapter, asked the Sudanese to join the SPLM in large numbers and register so that they are not left out in the democratization process of the Sudan. “It is only if you registered that you will vote [during the election and referendum]," he said. Continue reading »

Yousif Kuwa Mekki was born in 1945. As a boy he didn't consider himself to be a Nuba: "In the Nuba Mountains, you just knew your own tribe. We for example were Miri. So if we were asked: 'Who are the Nuba?' we would say: 'The other tribes - but not us.' Only when we came out of the Nuba Mountains we learned that we are all Nuba."

He always told anecdotes of the discrimination he experienced in his youth, like the one about the headmaster in primary school who refused to teach Nuba children, saying it was [of] no use. "This feeling of being disregarded," Kuwa said in one of his last interviews, "certainly affected my political career."

Yousif Kuwa taught for six years at primary schools in Darfur before applying to the University of Khartoum in 1975. "Studying politics and anthropology really opened my eyes," he said. Kuwa was strongly influenced by the ideas of Tanzania's first president Nyerere, especially by his concept of African Socialism. Continue reading »

March 29, 2008 (Beirut NSV) - With no end to their exile and suffering, Sudanese refugees in Lebanon are swamped with multitudes of challenges in a country where they are living illegally.

“People need to know the situation is bad,” Bol Athuai,38, a resident of Edmonton, Canada, said of the refugees’ ordeal in Lebanon after he had himself toughed it out in the country from 1997-2007, when the UN resettled him in Canada.

Similar to many of his colleagues who found new homes in Western countries such as Australia, USA and Canada, Bol’s chances of resettling to Canada were enhanced after he landed in jail for being in the country illegally. In prison, the United Nations-Lebanon learned about his case through his friends who had alerted them about his dire condition.

While in jail Bol followed up with officials from the Canadian embassy on resettlement papers until he finally arrived in Canada last year, after waiting for five years. To get his visa stamped, he made a payment of $3000. Continue reading »

March 11th, 2008 (Washington NSV) - After a week long of lobbying in the United States for a push to revive the controversial Darfur Peace Agreement, SLM'ss Minni Arcua Minnawi returns to Sudan determined to soldier on with the beleaguered pact.

Minni Arcua Minnawi, leader of a faction of Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), told The New Sudan Vision in a phone interview from Washington on Sunday night he had come to the United States of America to voice his disenchantment with the slow progress of the DPA to the International Community and the United States government.

"I am not satisfied [with Darfur peace] but I will push it," said Minnawi whose faction became the sole signer to the DPA with the Sudan government on May 5th 2006 in Abuja, Nigeria.

"We delivered our message to them. We don't know the response," he said, in a veiled reference to the US that some analysts said exerted mounting pressure on him to sign on to the deal. Continue reading »

March 1, 2008 (Phoenix, USA NSV) - On Tuesday, February 27, a man of South Sudan’s origin shot dead his girlfriend in Arizona, United States. The man, now a United States citizen originally came from South Sudan’s Jonglei State. He has been in the United States since 2001 and holds a US citizenship.

This is not the first time a Sudanese man has killed his girlfriend in the States but for the Lost Boys, it is. Three years ago, a middle age Sudanese man killed his wife in Washington over allegations of adultery.

In 2004 in the Midwest, another man stabbed his wife and committed suicide, according to sources.

The deceased is a mother of four, ages 3-18. Continue reading »