Satellite project: Images show more mass graves in Sudan
By the CNN Wire Staff
August 24, 2011 — Updated 1243 GMT (2043 HKT)
DigitalGlobe satellite imagery of the Hilla Gadida area in Sudan shows evidence of an apparent mass grave site.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir rejects the findings
- A U.S. satellite project says it has found evidence in South Kordofan
- Its report includes witness accounts and images of what it says are body bags
(CNN) — A U.S. satellite project said Wednesday it has found evidence of additional mass graves in South Kordofan, a day after the Sudanese president called for a unilateral cease-fire in the state.
The Satellite Sentinel Project said it has evidence of a total of eight mass graves in the area since June, including two additional ones recently in and around Kadugli.
Kadugli is the capital of the border state.
The project cited witness accounts and images of what it says are body bags.
Ethnic clashes flare in South Sudan
“This report presents more visual evidence and new information by eyewitnesses … of the collection and burial of human remains wrapped in tarps and/or body bags by the Sudanese Red Crescent Society,” it said in a statement.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir rejected the findings as propaganda from the west.
The Satellite Sentinel Project, which is partially funded by U.S. actor George Clooney, is based on the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative’s analysis of satellite imagery and witness reports.
In the past, the government has said rebels are to blame for the violence in the region, and has been engaged in a fierce campaign to battle what it says are militia in the area.
Al-Bashir on Tuesday called for a two-week, unilateral cease-fire in the state, saying the government would assess the situation after that period.
The report follows allegations by human rights groups that Sudanese forces have conducted widespread killings in the region this summer.
The project has said its evidence is consistent with allegations that Sudan forces and militias “have engaged in a campaign of killing civilians.”
Nuba fighters helped South Sudan during the civil war with Sudan, which raged for decades and left millions dead.
South Sudan became an independent nation in July. South Kordofan remains a territory of the Sudanese government in the north, but borders South Sudan.
In July, a United Nations report detailed new allegations of violence, including mass graves, in the volatile border state.
Reported incidents included aerial attacks that killed civilians, attacks on churches, arbitrary arrests, abductions and house-to-house searches, said the report.
“This report provides only a small window on what’s happening in Southern Kordofan,” Philippe Bolopion of Human Rights Watch said last month.
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/africa/08/24/sudan.mass.graves/
New Evidence of Mass Graves in Sudan: Group
A U.S.-based satellite imagery organization says it has found new evidence of mass graves in Sudan’s oil-rich Southern Kordofan state.
On Wednesday, the Satellite Sentinel Project released eyewitness reports and images of what it says are machinery and body bags used by the Sudanese Red Crescent Society to excavate and fill the burial sites.
The organization says it has now identified a total of eight mass graves in the region, including the two announced today.
Sudan’s government rejects the group’s findings. The government blames violence in the region on rebel groups and the army of newly independent South Sudan.
On Tuesday, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir called for a two-week, unilateral cease-fire in Southern Kordofan. Speaking in Kadugli, capital of the border state, President Bashir said the situation on the ground would be assessed after the truce.
Fighting between government forces and Southern Kordofan’s ethnic Nuba rebels broke out in June, about a month before South Sudan split from the north and declared independence. The fighting near the Sudan-South Sudan border drove tens of thousands of Nuba from their homes.
Nuba fighters sided with the south during Sudan’s 21-year civil war.
http://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-news/2011/08/24/new-evidence-of-mass-graves-in-sudan-group/
Images Show Mass Graves in Sudan, Group Says
By JOSH KRON
Published: August 24, 2011
KAMPALA, Uganda — A satellite imagery project monitoring parts of Sudan says it has found new evidence of mass graves in the troubled Nuba Mountains region, where the government has recently waged a fierce campaign to stamp out rebels.
In a report scheduled to be published Wednesday, the Satellite Sentinel Project contends that as many as eight mass graves have been dug in the area since June, including two new sites discovered in the past week. It says the images show body bags, vehicles and machinery used to dispose of the dead.
The information and images provided by the project follow multiple allegations by residents and human rights advocates that the Sudanese government and its aligned forces have carried out widespread killings and other abuses against civilians in the region this summer. The Sudanese government rejects the assertion, saying it has taken aim solely at the rebels, not at civilians.
“The pictures do not show the truth,” Rabie A. Atti, a Sudanese government spokesman, said Tuesday. “Behind them I think it is the rebels that falsify such rumors, to bring the international community to intervene in this domestic crisis.”
The satellite project report also contends that the Sudanese Red Crescent Society, the national branch of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, played a primary role in digging and filling mass graves, as well as possibly burning bodies.
The Sudanese Red Crescent Society has acknowledged collecting dead bodies for burial in the Nuba Mountains as part of its humanitarian mission, and that it was given machinery by the Sudanese government to help excavate land for this purpose. The organization has also been quoted as saying it was accompanied by a “criminal investigation team.” But it denies digging mass graves.
On Tuesday, Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, declared a two-week cease-fire in the region, where fighting between rebels and the government intensified before neighboring South Sudan broke off from the north in July to become an independent country.
South Sudan’s independence was a capstone of diplomatic efforts to end a decades-long civil war between the north and south. But as Mr. Bashir freed himself from one conflict, he became increasingly entangled in another. The Nuba Mountains are in the state of Southern Kordofan, which many fear could be Sudan’s next Darfur.
Refugees from the embattled region have spoken of indiscriminate bombings and execution-style murders, and an unpublished United Nations report said the violence in the region could amount to war crimes.
According to the Satellite Sentinel Project, which is partially financed by the American actor George Clooney, digital images from sites around the Nuba Mountains and testimony by witnesses present what the project calls an organized campaign to dump dead bodies in mass graves and camouflage the sites.
According to the report, satellite images from an area of Kadugli, in the Nuba Mountains region, show large holes being dug in the ground, white bundles believed to be body bags placed inside and then covered up. The project says a witness reported watching an industrial excavation machine dig and cover mass graves, with Sudanese Red Crescent workers burying more than 30 bodies in two holes.
The project report said, “What should no longer be debated is that these alleged crimes, including mass killing and subsequent mass burial of the dead, have happened and continue to occur.”
The United Nations, which recently moved its peacekeeping mission in Sudan out of the north and opened up a new mandate in South Sudan, last week called for a new inquiryinto allegations of atrocities committed in the north.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/24/world/africa/24sudan.html
Sudan says no proof of mass graves in conflict area
By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Sudan’s U.N. envoy dismissed fresh allegations by a U.S. group that says it has identified a total of eight mass graves in the African country’s conflict-ridden Southern Kordofan region.
The Washington-based Satellite Sentinel Project said in a new report released on Wednesday that it discovered two more mass graves in the oil-rich Southern Kordofan state in addition to six it had reported previously.
“There is no proof of mass graves there,” Sudan’s U.N. Ambassador Daffa-Alla Elhag Ali Osman told Reuters.
Osman added that there have undoubtedly been numerous casualties in the region but said they were caused by the army of newly independent South Sudan, which seceded from Khartoum last month.
Southern Kordofan holds most of Sudan’s known oil reserves after the south split away and took its oilfields with it.
Activists have accused Khartoum of launching airstrikes and attacks in Southern Kordofan, targeting the state’s ethnic Nuba group, in a bid to stamp out opposition and assert its authority after South Sudan’s independence.
The United Nations said tens of thousands have fled the violence in the territory, which borders South Sudan.
Sudan’s government has dismissed the accusations and accused local armed groups, many of which fought alongside the south during decades of civil war with the north, of launching a rebellion to try to control the territory.
LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE
Osman said people should focus on positive developments, such as the unannounced visit of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir to Southern Kordofan on Tuesday. Bashir, indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in Darfur, announced a unilateral two-week ceasefire.
“People should concentrate on what is positive,” he said. “What has happened has happened.”
Bashir also said that foreign organizations would not be allowed into Southern Kordofan and that any aid would be delivered only through the Sudanese Red Crescent organization.
But the Satellite Sentinel Project (SSP) said the Sudanese Red Crescent has been digging mass graves and burying bodies.
“The Sudanese Red Crescent Society excavated mass graves and filled them with corpses in South Kordofan, according to evidence gathered by SSP,” the group said
“The evidence includes eyewitness reports obtained by SSP, and statements from the SRCS, substantiated by DigitalGlobe satellite imagery,” it said.
The SSP report also includes what it says is an official Sudanese Red Crescent photo of the body disposal team.
A U.N. human rights office report last week documented alleged violations in the state capital Kadugli and surrounding Nuba mountains, including extrajudicial killings, illegal detention, enforced disappearances, attacks against civilians, looting of homes and mass displacement.
Such violence, if substantiated, could amount to crimes against humanity or war crimes, the United Nations said.
U.N. officials had no comment on the new SSP report. Since July 9, when the UNMIS peacekeeping mission’s mandate expired, the 10,000-strong U.N. force that monitored compliance with a fragile 2005 north-south Sudan peace deal cannot carry out regular patrols and is being forced to withdraw.
© Thomson Reuters 2011 All rights reserved
http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE77N00920110824?sp=true
South Sudan: Yet More Compelling Evidence of Atrocity Crimes in South Kordofan
AllAfrica.com
To be sure, Khartoum has now offered the UN the opportunity for a brief “assessment mission” inSouth Kordofan, which will be strictly controlled by the Sudan Armed Forces and Military Intelligence; it will be a thoroughly sanitized view. …
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