December 15th: South Sudan’s Sad Day!!!
The largest country of Sudan was divided into two separate political entities on July 9, 2011. It became two countries namely, the Republic of South Sudan and the Republic of Sudan. The statistics on Sudan before partition was that, it had an area of more than 2.5 million km2 and it was Africa’s largest country. Its inhabitants were 39.3 million divided over 57 ethnic groups, each with their own language and dialects. On December 15th, 2013, gunfire erupted in the South Sudanese city of Juba. At the scene, several soldiers were instantly killed and numerous others injured. The next few hours were punctuated by spread of violence in the city, with authorities concluding the event as being an attempted coup. The battle eventually took an ethnic dimension. Targeted killing ensued between the Nuer and the Dinka in Juba and elsewhere in the country.
However, members of other ethnic communities lost their lives, either through crossfire or some degree of targeting, much of which hasn’t been Sensitized in the media. On his blog at www.southernmind.blogspot.com, Adier Deng, a South Sudanese researcher, and a policy Analyst wrote, Sudan is called ‘place of creation’ by the native tribes who inhabit the land. The Arabs call it ‘land of the black. In the country’s early history Arabs concentrated their trade with the tribes in North Sudan. Eventually, Britain saw the value of Sudan’s rich natural resources and colonized the country. During this time, northern black African tribes were forced to convert to Islam. This set the stage for generations of war. By 1956 when Sudan gained its independence from Britain, the country was left without leadership and the country’s power was transferred to Arab north. The Christian and animist tribes in south Sudan saw this as a threat and, as a result, civil war erupted. The first civil war produced 1.5 million Sudanese deaths before temporarily subsiding in 1972. In 1983, the north imposed Sharia Law on the south, declaring that all Sudanese must convert to Islam. In response both Animist and Christian population in the south refused to submit to Islam. Over the next twenty-five years northern militias burned homes, schools, clinics, churches, and public buildings to the ground. The devastation affected a region the size of France. By 1983, over two million Sudanese were killed, six million people were displaced, and four million fled as refugees to other countries. Despite the losses, the number of anti-Arab movements in the South grew strong. There are hundreds of Sudanese refugees families residing in Grand Rapids Michigan many of whom came as Lost Boys/Girls through the Bethany’s resettlement program.