On Sunday, January 9th, 2011, the people of Southern Sudan – Christians and animists, or practitioners of native faiths – will have the chance to vote to form an independent nation. The election was stipulated in a 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement brought by the Bush Administration that ended a 22-year civil war between Sudan’s mostly Muslim North and the country’s mainly Christian South. A vote for independence will mean secession from Sudan’s Muslim extremist government in the country’s North. Since the 1950’s, this government, situated in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, has perpetrated slaughter and enslavement of black Africans, often in the name of Islam.
In the video below, I speak with Simon Deng, prominent Sudanese-American human rights activist and escaped slave, about the historical slaughter and enslavement of his people, the Christians of South Sudan, and about his hopes for the nation to be born.
In previous interviews with Big Peace, Deng shared his personal story of enslavement and escape, discussed the efforts of Christians and others in South Sudan to resist Islamic extremists, and shared his people’s hopes for friendship between Israel, the United States, and Southern Sudan.
[youtube BQzpJ71P5bg]
You can learn more about Sudan and other issues at Heatherrobinson.net
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