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"This morning, I received details of the bombing of a school in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan and the killing of 14 and their teacher," Roman Catholic Bishop Macram Max Gassis said on February 15. "It is truly a slaughter of the innocents."

The bishop's impassioned testimony set the stage for the newly formed U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom's first public hearing in Washington, D.C.

Gassis, who is Sudanese, described what he called a religious war of genocide against Christians and other opponents of Sudan's fundamentalist Islamic government.

"We have walked for miles amongst human and cattle corpses with systematic burning of homes, churches, mosques, animist shrines, clinics, schools, and crops," testified Baroness Caroline Cox of Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

Cox described how the Khartoum government has driven moderate Muslims into the desert to die, and enslaved Christians as a method of forced conversion.

She also testified about Sudanese concentration camps—called "peace camps"—with high rates of executions, death by starvation, and rapes.

Sudan is "the hell of the world," says Dan Eiffe of Norwegian People's Aid. Eiffe escorted representatives of the commission through southern Sudan in January.

Denouncing the Clinton Administration's inaction, Roger Winter of the U.S. Committee for Refugees estimated more than 1.9 million southern Sudanese and Nuba Mountain peoples have perished since 1983. Another 4 million or more have been driven into absolute poverty. Another 50,000 Sudanese have been enslaved. The U.S. Commission was established last spring to monitor progress and make recommendations on eliminating religious persecution.

The hearing devoted much attention to Sudan's Nuba Mountain and Blue Nile regions. The Khartoum government has battled rebels in those regions to gain access to untapped oil resources and finance its internal war. Witnesses and commissioners particularly criticized Canadian and Chinese involvement in developing the oil fields and aiding Khartoum's war machine.

The oil regions have become killing fields as pro-Khartoum troops create a buffer zone to protect the now-functioning pipeline from rebel attacks, according to reports from Faith in Action's Derek Hammond. Eyewitness accounts of severe vomiting, along with eye and breathing problems, suggest the illicit use of poison gas in the bombings of civilians.

Hammond recounted miles of burned-out villages, tales of slow killings, and gang rapes. A Canadian government special report released the day before the U.S. hearing concluded that Canadian oil company Talisman Energy had materially aided Khartoum's war effort. In addition, according to a high-level Sudanese defector, shiploads from China labeled "oil equipment" have in reality contained rifles, rockets, aircraft, and mines.

The commission has pressed the Clinton administration since last summer to sanction Talisman Energy, which owns 25 percent of Sudan's Greater Nile Oil Project in the Blue Nile region, and China National Petroleum Corporation, which owns a 40 percent stake. China National, under the name of PetroChina, plans to raise $5-7 billion through the New York Stock Exchange with help from the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs International.

Within days of the commission hearing, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that it would impose sanctions on Sudan's oil companies. The department decided, however, not to take action against Talisman or to block China National from U.S. markets. The sanctions prohibit U.S. companies and citizens from doing business with the Sudanese oil companies.

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April 3 2000, Vol. 44, No. 4