Sudan Mass Graves? U.S. Group Claims To Have Evidence

[High_Gravity]

Sudan Mass Graves? U.S. Group Claims To Have Evidence

NAIROBI, Kenya -- A U.S. satellite monitoring group released images Thursday that it fears show a mass grave in Sudan, saying witnesses also have described 100 or more bodies being thrown into a pit in the same area.

The Satellite Sentinel Project images show what appear to be freshly dug sites in Southern Kordofan state, where Sudan's Arab military has been targeting a black ethnic minority loyal to the military of the newly independent Republic of South Sudan.

"The DigitalGlobe satellite images contain many of the details and hallmarks of the mass atrocities described by at least five eyewitnesses to the alleged killings," said Nathaniel A. Raymond, of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, which analyzes the project's images.

Fighting broke out in the region on June 5. Neither the U.N., outside aid groups nor journalists have access to the region, raising fears that more violence is being carried out than is known publicly.

A spokesman for Sudan's ruling party denied the project's allegations and said the area is accessible to observers, though aid groups say it is not.

"Even if there is any suspicion on such pictures, people can go there and visit the area and see what is the actual reality," said Rabie A. Atti, National Congress Party spokesman. "I think this is only rumors trying to, you know, blacken the people of our government."

Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College in Massachusetts who has written a book on the atrocities in the western Sudan's Darfur region and is following the violence in Kordofan, said reports have been coming out of the Nuba Mountains for weeks of targeted killings.

He had not seen the satellite photos when contacted late Wednesday but said the satellite project had an "impeccable" record of interpreting previous satellite images from Sudan, particularly the contested region of Abyei.

"No one will be able to express skepticism after the confirmation of mass graves. We've had these reports for weeks now, and they keep coming," said Reeves. "We now have, if not a smoking gun, satellite confirmation of ethnically targeted extermination efforts."

Story continues below
Advertisement
The satellite group said three excavated areas measuring about 26 meters (yards) by 5 meters (yards) are visible near a school in the town of Kadugli. The group said that an eyewitness reported seeing 100 bodies or more put into one of the pits on June 8.

After the violence broke out, the U.N. said at least 73,000 people had fled the region. Many of the displaced are ethnic Nuba who have long been marginalized. They are mostly seeking shelter in nearby communities or hiding out in the Nuba Mountains where they have no access to medical assistance, food and clean water.

A U.N. report obtained by The Associated Press last month said that Sudanese intelligence agents posed as Red Crescent workers and ordered refugees to leave a U.N.-protected camp in Southern Kordofan. The U.N. report contained no information about what happened to those people afterward.

The satellite project said it was told by an eyewitness that Sudanese Armed Forces troops, militia fighters, men in brown uniforms consisted with those worn by prisoners and individuals dressed in a manner consistent with Sudan Red Crescent Society workers were seen driving large green trucks close to the alleged mass grave site.

Because the authorities in Southern Kordofan are barring international aid agencies from entering the region, and journalists are not able to safely access it. Activists fear the Khartoum government is carrying out targeted killings like those in Darfur over the last decade.

"Men at the site were reportedly unloading dead bodies from the trucks and depositing them in the open pits. The individual claims to have seen some bodies in what appeared to be bags," said the report.

The project did not identify any witnesses or its means of communicating with them for fear of reprisal attacks.

Sudan Mass Graves? U.S. Group Claims To Have Evidence

 

[Si modo]

Sadly, it wouldn't surprise me at all.

 

[High_Gravity]

Sadly, it wouldn't surprise me at all.

The Sudanese Arabs are now working on exterminating the Nuba People, so we will see more of this however nobody will do anything.

 

[Si modo]

Sadly, it wouldn't surprise me at all.

The Sudanese Arabs are now working on exterminating the Nuba People, so we will see more of this however nobody will do anything.

I know. It pisses me off. Losing the Nubians will be a loss to all humanity, and nothing.

I don't get why everyone does squat.

 

[High_Gravity]

Sadly, it wouldn't surprise me at all.

The Sudanese Arabs are now working on exterminating the Nuba People, so we will see more of this however nobody will do anything.

I know. It pisses me off. Losing the Nubians will be a loss to all humanity, and nothing.

I don't get why everyone does squat.

The Sudanese government will make Hitler proud, they have performed numerous acts of genocide against the Nuba people, the Darfurians and the Christians in South Sudan, they have yet to be called to account for any of these. It is sad because the Nubian people have been around for thousands of years since the ancient Egyptian times, if I were them I would try to get to South Sudan and appeal for asylum as soon as possible.

 

[High_Gravity]

Clooney's Satellites Capture Piles of Bodies, Mass Graves in Sudan

George Clooney's Satellite Sentinel Project set up to monitor the spiraling violence in Sudan has a stunning report out today with convincing evidence showing "a campaign of systematic mass killing of civilians in Kadugli, South Kordofan" in the south-central area of the country. TIME was the first to write about Clooney's project.

The group combined eyewitness reports and DigitalGlobe satellite imagery to pinpoint what seem almost certainly to be piles of bodies in Kadguli and mass graves south of there. The group cites four eyewitness accounts of Sudan Armed Forces from northern Sudan and related militias searching houses in the town and "systematically killing" civilians suspected of supporting southern Sudan forces.


The report describes the slitting of one civilian's throat and sealing and burning homes with civilians inside.

Eyewitnesses also describe the mass graves, shown above, dug by a yellow earth mover on June 8 less than a mile south of the Tilo School in Kadugli. The pits are about 26 meters long and 5 meters wide. Large green trucks were seen driving to the site and unloading around 100 bodies.

Witnesses say before being buried in the mass grave, some of the bodies were wrapped in white plastic and piled up in Kadugli. The group captured what seem to be a pile of those bodies, too. See below.

Read more: Clooney's Satellites Capture Piles of Bodies, Mass Graves in Sudan - Battleland - TIME.com

 

[High_Gravity]

Sudan Mass Graves Reportedly Found

NAIROBI, Kenya -- A U.S. monitoring group said Wednesday that satellite imagery had revealed the existence of two more mass graves in a contested region of Sudan, bringing the total number of mass graves sited there to eight.

The Satellite Sentinel Project, a group backed by actor and Sudan activist George Clooney, said that witnesses told the group that a backhoe was used to dig some of the graves at sites in Kadugli, South Kordofan. Workers with the Sudanese Red Crescent Society were present during some of the burials, the group said.

The U.S. group has not made any estimates of the number of bodies it believes have been buried in the graves, saying that onsite research would need to be carried out.

South Kordofan lies just across the border from newly independent South Sudan and has been the site of clashes between government troops from Sudan's Arab north and black tribesmen aligned with the south's Sudan People's Liberation Movement. Many inhabitants of South Kordofan fought for the south during the country's two decades-plus civil war against the north and are ethnically linked to the south.

A report released this month by the U.N. human rights office in Geneva said Sudanese security forces allegedly carried out indiscriminate aerial bombardments in South Kordofan that killed civilians in the weeks before South Sudan became independent on July 9. It also alleged that Sudanese forces executed prisoners accused of belonging to the south's Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement before burying them in mass graves.

"The evidence against the Sudanese government continues to compound and has now become impossible to dismiss. It is time for the international community to take serious action and execute its responsibility to protect innocent lives in Sudan," said John Prendergast, co-founder of the activist group the Enough Project.

The Sudanese Red Crescent Society has said that it buried 59 bodies in marked burial sites in Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan state, between mid-June and mid-July.

The International Committee of the Red Cross says it supplied body bags, rubber boots and cameras to SRCS teams tasked with the management of dead bodies, according to spokeswoman Anna Schaaf. The ICRC is not on the ground in South Kordofan.

Sudan Mass Graves Reportedly Found

 

[JStone]

Sadly, it wouldn't surprise me at all.

The Sudanese Arabs are now working on exterminating the Nuba People, so we will see more of this however nobody will do anything.

Arabs used to bury their babies alive and Sunnis and Shiites have been slaughtering each other for 1400 years.

Self-destruction seems to be in the Arab DNA

 

[Tank]

That's how they do it up in Africa, Yo