Canadian Alliance MP Dr. Keith Martin and former United Church of Canada moderator The Very Reverend Bill Phipps recently returned from trips to Sudan. As Calgary's Talisman Energy holds its annual meeting this week amid protests of human-rights activists over the company's operations in the African country, Martin and Phipps offer their eyewitness opinions.
They had walked from four different villages for more than a week. They were Nuer people from the oilfields of Southern Sudan. They are called IDPs — Internally Displaced People.
There are thousands of them, casualties of oil development in the midst of a brutal civil war.
We had travelled from Nairobi to Lokichoggio in northern Kenya; from there to Rumbek in South Sudan; then on to Thiet and further north over rugged roads to Wuncuei, south of the major oilfields which companies such as Talisman Energy of Canada and Lundin of Sweden have made famous.
They were fleeing their homeland, leaving behind burned-out villages, their dead and wounded.
We had travelled deep into the countryside in order to learn first-hand what is really going on in Sudan. We met under a huge tree and sat on the bare earth while around us, the wind churned up a dust storm. We were not fully prepared to meet, face-to-face, people in such dreadful condition who have somehow maintained their dignity.
There were four chiefs among them, each of whom told their story. The government in Khartoum and its military and various militia, using the oil companies (probably not Talisman in the case of these people), were continuing to clear the land of people who had lived there for centuries. They told us that helicopter gun-ships, tanks and machine guns slaughtered people, particularly women, children and the elderly. They told us that their homes were burned.
These were not soldiers. They were defenceless farmers. There are no other words for it than calculated, deliberate slaughter.
One man said: “They want our land without us.”
The 30 or so people we met had left behind about 600 people in addition to the dead and wounded. They were languishing on a riverside living on water lilies and nuts while their leaders were looking for refuge.
As we sat together under that tree, each chief named individuals he had personally seen die. As each name was pronounced, the chief placed a small stick or nut on the ground between us: Gatlak Vidai, a small boy . . . Nyakot Kedet, a blind woman . . . Yap Ther, an old man . . . The litany went on until each chief finished naming the dead.
We looked into the eyes of sorrow, terror and pain. Their eyes and voices pleaded for the evil to end. As one person told us: “The oil under our feet has become a curse to us.”
Oil revenue fuels and intensifies an already brutal war which has killed two million people and displaced four million more in the past 17 years. I was a member of the Canadian Ecumenical Mission to Sudan, five church leaders and our staff person from the Inter-Church Coalition on Africa. We were invited by the Sudan Council of Churches and the New Sudan Council of Churches (NSCC).
Besides meeting with the Internally Displaced People, who are more directly affected by oil development, we met with an impressive range of people with first-hand experience of the war and its consequences.
Some Sudanese Church leaders described the tactics of the Khartoum government as “genocidal.”
We believe that systematic bombings, attacks on defenceless civilians, forced displacement of civilian populations, mass starvation and other acts of terrorism that have been well documented by human-rights agencies require urgent action by the international community.
There are many and complex dimensions to the Sudanese conflicts. But we must not let complexity disguise calls for clear actions. We suggest at least two steps.
First, a moratorium on all aspects of oil development until a just peace, with fair oil revenue sharing, is negotiated. Second, greater international support for the peace processes already under way.
We are advocating international pressure to put a moratorium on ALL oil development, including Talisman. In our opinion, Talisman’s humanitarian efforts are minuscule compared to the indiscriminate death which has resulted from the ongoing civil war.
Furthermore, do we want to condone Canadian companies engaged in commerce where civil war rages and in countries controlled by brutal dictatorships who have no regard for human rights, or human life? We say “No.”
I don’t believe that glossy reports on corporate responsibility can camouflage the flow of blood and burning homes. Every dollar received from oil production is dripping with blood. The killing must stop.
Surely, if we have the brains to engage in global economic activity from which we are financially enriched, we have the expertise to stop militarized commerce and to develop rules which safeguard human rights and protect life.
But do we have the moral will? The pale excuses we offer in justification for continuing on the current course are an insult to humanity and a confirmation of our greed.
(Phipps is the former Moderator of the United Church of Canada. He travelled to Sudan in April with The Inter-Church Coalition on Africa, which has called for all foreign development in Sudan to be withdrawn until the civil war is over.)
