Q & A with Sr. Yudith Pereira, bringing health care, education and peacebuilding to South Sudan

The Sudan Relief Fund would like to recognize and commend Sr. Yudith Pereira for her inspiring acts of kindness, impact, and commitment to alleviating the suffering country of South Sudan. Pereira is the Assistant Executive Director of Solidarity with South Sudan; She helps run the organization’s program that include projects in education, health, and pastoral institutions that empower South Sudanese people to build a just and peaceful society.

Sr. Pereira and I met last month in Rome and have worked together for several years due to the partnership we have developed with the organization. The Sudan Relief Fund is currently funding aid relief to a refugee camp in the town of Riimenze, in collaboration with Solidarity with South Sudan.

Most recently, Sr. Pereira spoke with Global Sisters Report about her daily work, the country’s needs and her spirituality in the face of suffering. To read her full interview and learn more about her exceptional efforts.

http://globalsistersreport.org/blog/q/ministry/q-sr-yudith-pereira-bringing-health-care-education-and-peacebuilding-south-sudan

Neil Corkery
President

Citizens in Yambio ride for peace and co-existence

In a recent open letter, the Catholic Bishop of Tombura Yambio Diocese, Barani Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala is reminding leaders that “achieving peace demands of all of us that we act with real respect for human life. It demands that those who still sponsor anger, hate, segregation and violence against on another end such meaningless projects or ideas.”

 In hopes of promoting peace and co-existence among the people, Bishop Kussala arranged a bicycle ride for the residents of Yambio, the capital of South Sudan’s newly created Gbudue state.

The ‘May they be one’ event was held at Gbudue stadium. Such bicycle riding activities are commonly organized in the region because it brings together different people, despite their positions and various ethnicity.

The governor of Gbudue state, Daniel Badagbu, expressed his gratitude towards the sports activities, saying they have the ability to boost working relations between citizens and transform societal cultures of war to cultures of peace and harmony.

Read more here.

South Sudanese troops accused of civilian ‘slaughter’

Testimonies from South Sudanese refugees are revealing glimpses of brutality as hundreds flee into Uganda for a second day following an attack by government forces on the border town of Pajak.

According to reports, at least 17 people were killed while approximately 3,000 new refugees crossed into Uganda this week. Some were shot as they tried to flee, two children were run down by a car, and others had their throats slit.

The government denies its Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) forces target civilians and said Monday’s attack was to flush out rebels.

The United Nations said in December it had evidence of ethnic cleansing by both government forces and rebels, with soldiers showing callous disregard for civilian life.

The Ugandan government and United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) are scrambling to complete a half-built refugee settlement near Ngomoromo for the latest arrivals, who are currently living in the bush at the Ugandan border. Even when these refugees reach the relative safety of a settlement camp, many still face an agonizing wait for loved ones who went missing in the panic.

Read more here.

The Ugandans who let 272,000 South Sudanese refugees move in down the road

America, meet Uganda, where in this almost all-Muslim corner of the country the locals already have made room for 272,000 South Sudanese Christians fleeing famine and ethnic cleansing in a country on the brink of genocide—a situation that’s just part of what the United Nations is calling the greatest humanitarian crisis since 1945.

Of the 1.5 million South Sudanese on the run from tribal warfare that has now developed into mass rape, forced starvation and other unspeakable violence, almost 700,000 have streamed across that border since peace negotiations broke down last July.

“What the whole world should know is we’re not doing it because we must do it,’’ says Robert Baryamwesiga, of the Ugandan prime minister’s office, who is the commandant of Bidi Bidi Refugee Settlement camp. “We are doing this because we’re part of the international community, and we have this obligation to humanity.”

Ugandans insist they will keep making room, at the same time the United States is taking a “pause” on accepting any refugees. For now, the pause is a moot point since no one in the refugee settlements has been cleared for resettlement by the United Nations.

But in the long term as well as on the aid side, Baryamwesiga worries about whether the U.S. will do its share under President Donald Trump: “The U.S. has been our biggest partner with resettlement, but now we don’t know what the future will hold.”

http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/melinda-henneberger/article138504578.html

In Sudan, health care is a political act for hero doctors

It took Ahmed Zacharia, the only native-born doctor of the four who serve 1.5 million people in the Nuba Mountains, a full 11 years to complete his six years of medical study. Too little time in the library wasn’t the problem, but too much time in jail, where he was tortured for opposing the Islamist government.

He and his American colleague, Tom Catena, the only trained American surgeon in the Nuba Mountains, provide so much more than medical care in a place where women still often die during childbirth and children of dehydration from untreated diarrhea. Their decision to stay on and work in hospitals that have repeatedly been bombed by government forces inspires the kind of gratitude that you can really only call love.

But recently, both of their personal lives have taken turns that gave the Nuba people a reason to celebrate: Zacharia, who is 40, married not long ago, and in the ultimate expression of hope in an uncertain future, he and his wife are expecting their first child.

Catena is also a newlywed whose wife, Nasima Mohammed Bashir, is a Nuba born nurse. Dr. Tom is Nubian now!’’ a local friend says. Nasima’s own marriage, of course, is not at all typical: “I’m the first person to marry a white man,’’ she says, which people being people, “some criticize and some appreciate.”

In a world of shifting alliances, Zacharia loves that medicine is so morally unambiguous: “Even those injured on the front lines” while fighting against his people “come to us, and there are medical laws and you treat them; it’s straightforward.”

Catena says he is motivated by his Catholic faith and seems to have settled in the area. He says the only one way he’d leave this life is if things got so much better that his patients there didn’t need him anymore. That will not be happening any time soon.

http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/melinda-henneberger/article137317423.html

South Sudan melts down as we avert our eyes…

There are more than 700,000 refugees from South Sudan just across the border in northern Uganda. The country is on the brink of a genocide, according to a new warning – its direst yet—from the United Nations.

How many more people have to die before we decide to intervene?

The UN report issued this week, after a seven month inquiry by the United nations High Commissioner for Refugees, cites ethnic cleansing, mass rape and deliberate starvation in a country where a famine was declared last month, and displaced farmers can’t plant their crops.

As in Rwanda, South Sudanese are fleeing to churches where they hope they’ll be protected. And just as in Rwanda, they are not safe there either. In an interview in Kampala, Bishop Eduardo Kussala, of formerly peaceful Yambio, says 7 of his 33 parishes have become refugees for thousands – and in some places, tens of thousands.

South Sudan’s so-called leaders now copy the tactics of their former Sudanese oppressors. Salva Kiir, the country’s president, whose troops now rape and kill, still proudly wears the cowboy hat that was a gift from George W. Bush, who worked intensely on the Sudan peace process.

If there’s to be any hope of saving the South Sudanese people from those who are running what’s left of their country, the new U.S. president, Donald Trump, will have to be more engaged than Barack Obama, who said all the right words about genocide but waited until it was too late to even push for an arms embargo.

Many of the rest of us also have said more than once that we’d never stand by and let this happen again, yet here we are. “The world if busy with itself,” says Bishop Kussala. But that is no excuse.

Read full article by Melinda Henneberger here.