Brenna Cussen ('03)

Description of the protest on Feb. 2, 2005

Brenna's account of the May 25, 2005 trial of the "Sudan Seven" after their arrest for blocking the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, DC.

Brenna's reflections from jail

A 30-minute DVD of the protest and trial is available.
 

Brenna's Reflections & photos from her trip to Sudan

December 5. 2004

Peace! Scott, Chris, Grace, and I arrived in Khartoum close to midnight last night. I believe we are about 8 hours ahead of eastern time in the U.S. We settled into our hotel, the Acropole, which is run by 3 Greek brothers, and the main owner, George, has been more than helpful. He is actually the one who secured our visas to the country, helped us get a cell phone (which you all can try if you have a lot of money - 011 249 9 12 186 586), got us photography permits, and will be helping us get flights into Darfur.

We had a meeting with Fr. Achille Tong today. He is the Assistant Secretary General of the Sudan Conference of Catholic Bishops, and is acting Sec. General while the S.G. is in the Nuba Mountains. He was more than helpful. His office, the SCBC, will be getting us travel permits to Darfur, which is not an easy process. However, he thinks that we will have them tomorrow, God willing! Our meeting with him was very fruitful. He is quite happy we are here, and believes our money (we have about $17,000 we can disperse) will be put to good use.

The plan of action we hope for is to arrive in Nyala on Wednesday, and spend a few days there. We will be assisted by the local Catholic Parish priest, Fr. Semakula, and SCBC/Caritas field workers. They will introduce us to people in IDP camps, and will be able to use our help buying food and water for people there.

We then hope to go to El Fasher, where a UN OCHA representative has already made contacts for us with the local Catholic priest there, as well as with a community of nuns. There are 2 IDP camps very close to El Fasher, and both of these camps, mostly populated by women and children, already have "self-help" programs in place. One nun in particular, Sr. Angelina, is quite eager to use our assistance in these programs.
 

Hopefully there will not be much red tape standing in our way, and we can do what we hope to do. However, things are going extremely smoothly so far, and we pray this is a sign of things to come. It seems God is with us on our trip!

Thank you all for your prayers and support. You are very much with us here. I will begin taking picutres now that I have permission. This morning I saw the point where the Blue and White Nile come together in Khartoum. It was quite a sight.

In Peace,
Brenna


December 7, 2004

We have had success in some areas, and less so in others. We have spoken with many people and learned much more about the situation here from various view points. However, frustratingly, the permits did not yet come, and it looks as though our flights to Nyala, Darfur, will not happen until Thursday morning (2 out of 3 offices have approved our permits so far.) Still, we are having much better luck than some others who have been stuck in this hotel since last week, or those who may not be able to leave at all. The Catholic Church in Nyala will host us, and workers from the Sudan Catholic Bishops Conference will assist us in speaking with IDPs and advising us on how to best spend the money we brought.

Last night we had an interview with somebody from a major NGO here. It was interesting that one of the first things he did was hand us a print-out of an email from his organization that basically told all of its employees that because of the recent events with Save the Children and Oxfam UK, they needed to be quite careful of what they said in any correspondence over the internet, with journalists,and other communications, that might upset the government. In order for NGOs to be allowed to remain in this country, they must STRICTLY do humanitarian aid, and not be seen in ANY way as partisan in the conflict. This man remained non-partisan during our talk with him.

I will write more about what he said to us when I get home, but some interesting information he gave us was that humanitarian groups are actually doing quite well financially at the moment. In terms of NGOs in Darfur, he said "anybody who is anybody" is in Darfur right now, and even some of the major organizations are looking extremely hard to find areas in which they can help that have not already been covered by other groups.

One major issue that remains, he admitted, is security. There are many areas in which people are suffering, but in which NGOs are not permitted to travel. Also, IDPs (internally displaced people) have no immediate hope of returning home from the camps. Their presence near towns is actually a huge strain on local economies and civil society, and in many cases, he said, resident populations are now much worse off than IDPs. (This makes us feel confident about our plan to bring money to Darfur and buy needed items for projects - food, water, and cloth - in towns there to boost the local economy.)

When we asked what NGOs were thinking in terms of helping IDPs get settled back into their towns, he said this was too far in the future to think about. People do not feel secure enough to return home. Meanwhile, the refugee camp infrastructure is growing, and dependency on foreign aid is growing. We expressed the concern that these camps will become permanent structures, as in the case of Palestinian refugees who have been in camps since 1948.

There is a law in Sudan that if people abandon their land for more than one year, they lose their right to it. A major fear is that refugees will not have homes to return to. Their homes and land are being taken away by a systematic process of removal and occupation.

This morning, we met with members of the Sudan Council of Churches, a group that has been extremely active in the peace process in the South for the last 30 years, a conflict, they said, with the same roots as the one in Darfur. They confirmed much of what we learned last night, and added a vital local perspective.

They said that while the humanitarian aid was important (for if it was not present, many people would starve and die), the most important focus of the international community should be to address the political roots of this conflict. Otherwise, people will end up dying in the long run anyway. They were also quite critical of how NGOs operated in the country. Although they appreciated the fact that IDP camps were making sure people didn't starve to death, they said, "NGOs make a business out of war." Too many groups are here, and yet none are willing to look at root causes, like WHY people are dying. Why are they marginalized? If NGOs only continue to feed people, it will be, as one local bishop put it, "like fattening the cow before you slaughter it."

In a way, they said, it is helpful that the conflict in Darfur has gotten so much attention, because it has the same roots as the conflict in the South - people do not have equal access to land, rights, or political power - and now these causes cannot be generalized under "an age-old religious conflict," as some have tried to do in the south. If it was a religious conflict, the Muslim government would not be killing fellow Muslims in the West. The issue is NOT religion, they said. It is NOT robbery or banditry, as the government would have people believe. It is an issue of marginalization. "Darfurians have a cause. They are not fighting for nothing. They have a right to reclaim their dignity."

They asked us to pressure our governments to pressure their government to provide equal rights to those marginalized in the south and in the west. Otherwise, they said, there is no point to feed people now, for they will only be killed later.
 

When we talked about the possibilites of large-scale nonviolent action, they seemed open to that. It is an issue that should be further explored. Something, they said, must be done to draw attention to the political situation. "A political conflict demands a political solution."

I will write in more detail upon returning home. For now, thank you all again for your prayers and support. With all of the bureaucracy and red tape that exists here, we've discovered, it is nothing short of a miracle the success we've had so far in finding people to talk with us and in getting (we hope!) our permits to Darfur. Your prayers, we are sure, are behind this.

In Peace,
Brenna

December 8, 2004

The article I am pasting to you is excellent. It confirms much of what we have been discovering here by talking to Sudanese people. It will also point you to other sources of information:
http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=17954

Today has been somewhat uneventful. We booked our tickets to Nyala, and are set to leave at 7:30 tomorrow morning (at the airport at 5:30 AM!) However, we did not hear word about our permits until about 3:00 PM. Francis Bassan, Executive Secretary of SudanAid, a branch of the Sudan Catholic Bishop's Conference, just returned from London, and sent for us almost immediately. He made some phone calls, and then told us we don't need permits as long as we are considered "guests of the Church." Otherwise, waiting for permits could take days longer. Therefore, this slightly limits our ability to do extensive traveling to camps once in Nyala, but he believes we may get to visit one or two camps, guided by the SudanAid workers and the parish priest there. It will also be very important, we believe, to be able to support their work financially, as most of the donors to this trip have come from the Catholic Community. (The Catholic Church, though not extremely large here, is quite active and well-connected to eachother, as we are discovering.) We believe that we will be able to learn much from these contacts, who seem speak more freely than many others in the position of humanitarian aid are able.

Mr. Bassan, when asked whether he would define the situation in Darfur as genocide, replied, "What does the term genocide mean? I know people are being killed indiscriminately. The international community has been so stuck on the definition of genocide. It depends on what they are willing to do to respond, and then they will decide whether or not it is genocide." He added, "What is happening in Darfur is the same as what has been happening in the South for many years. In the South, 2 million people have been killed, but the difference is only that it was not publicized. What happened in Darfur just happened so quickly that the other countries got scared, as they still had Rwanda in their minds."

He believes sanctions, especially of oil production, would do much to put a stop to the atrocities. Only the government will stop the janjaweed, but they have no incentive to do so at the moment, as they are the same. The gov't knows they are safe because the UN Security Council members, namely Russia and China, have the power of the veto. China and Russia are two of the main players in oil production, but both countries have refused to participate in an oil embargo. (Many arms have also come from Russia and China.)

We asked whether the everyday person would welcome sanctions, given the horrible humanitarian crisis that resulted from the sanctions on Iraq from 1991-2002. He asked, "What does the everyday person benefit from oil? The government, and the government controlled North of Sudan, are the only beneficiaries of oil production. The Southern Sudanese would believe in ANYTHING that might help bring this system down." An oil embargo would only hurt the rich, he said.

Another interesting factor: Egypt has long had rights over the Nile. However, the majority of the Nile flows through Sudan. For some reason (Bassan wasn't sure of the reason) the gov't has always allowed Egypt to have free reign over water. In this way, Egypt does not support the Naivasha peace process between the North and the South, because a peace agreement will eventually lead to South Sudanese rights to water, and less water for Egypt.

As John Prendergast says in the article I posted above, and as we are hearing from very concerned, active Sudanese people here, American people can do MUCH by having GRASSROOTS organizations put pressure on the Bush administration to seek stronger economic and political sanctions against the government in Khartoum. Part of this will include massive/creative protests at the Sudanese Embassies in NY and DC.

Interestingly, when we asked whether it would be effective to protest at a government building here, we were told that we'd be arrested immediately and it would never make the news. However, we were told that any protests at a Sudan Embassy in the U.S. that are able to make U.S. papers will be publicized here in the Khartoum Monitor. This, we were told, would give people hope that the world has not forgotten them.

So, that's my news for now. Peace be with you all.

Brenna

December 16

Blessed Advent! I am sorry to have not written in so long. I did not have easy access to the internet in Darfur, and have been catching up on many things since I returned home.

Below I will give a synopsis of our time in Darfur. It includes some day-to-day events for our team, some info about the conflict, and hopefully some hopeful stories of good work for PEACE and COMPASSION that is being conducted by the people of Darfur:

Thursday morning, December 9th, we were fortunately able to travel to Nyala, South Darfur (Darfur is divided into 3 regions - North, South, and West)... without travel permits! The SCBC (bishops conference) faxed somebody at the airport a letter explaining that we were "guests of the church" and so we were allowed to go through... not without much panicking, however... our passports were returned to us (delivered to us at the airport) exactly 15 minutes before our flight was to leave. It was like a scene out of a movie, with Magda (the SCBC visa officer) waving our passports over a crowd of people who were being stopped by security from getting in. We had just about lost hope of ever getting into Darfur until this miracle occurred.

While in Nyala, we stayed in guest rooms of the SCC - Sudan Council of Churches - which has teamed up with NCA (Norwegian Church Aid) and the SCBC to form a group called SudanAid. The SCC is made up of Christian Churches, and everybody we met affiliated with their group was from the South of Sudan, and had moved to Darfur (or Khartoum) when they were displaced by the war in the South. They explained that many of the IDPs in Darfur have been displaced twice now: first from the war in the South, and now from the current attacks.

The SCC has 3 areas of focus - 1) Education: constructing schools (both for people in Nyala and for IDPs) and food; 2)Agricultural Rehabilitation: donkeys and ploughs, seeds, food for work; and 3) Non-food Items (cooking utensils, clothing, sanitary mateirals, shelter).

They explained to us how different NGOs, different groups coordinate so they all provide different needs to IDPs and to different camps, but they try to cover all areas. We were able to leave $1500 with this organization.

We visited with Fr. Denima, the asst. pastor of St. Joseph's Church in Nyala, which does a lot of work with IDPs (though mainly IDPs originally from the South.) Fr. Denima is from Congo, and he and 2 other priests serve 150 chapels in their "parish" - a huge area in Darfur. One of the priests recently finished his four years of study in Chicago!

The Church building also acts as a school, and we met many of the students (and took their pictures) every day, as the church was often our meeting point. Fr. Denima has also supported a local women's group... women who have suffered from the war and who get together every Saturday to form a supportive community. This group has only recently started, he said, but they are at the point now where they want to do something together as a group... so they will start to do weavings and make clothing. We left a great deal of $ with the Church, and cloth for the women's group, and earmarked some of the money for more materials for the group.

Fr. Denima, as well as many other groups we spoke with, agreed that the main issue in Darfur is SECURITY. If there was no violence, there would be no humanitarian crisis. The government is encouraging IDPs to return to their villages, but people won't go because they don't feel safe. However, the longer they remain in the camps, the more likely they will lose skills and become dependent on aid.

Our team was able to visit 4 IDP camps. The largest, Kalma camp, was as big as a town; but it was made up of small huts that people had made themselves, in which it was impossible to stand up or lie down straight. Nobody had an exact count, but we heard that about 50,000 people lived there. The other 3 camps were much smaller and much closer to town: Drieg, Otas, and Musee. In each camp, we were able to visit a few women in their huts and talk to them with the help of a translater. With these women we left some bread, cloth, money, or blankets (although it was hot to us, 75 at night was very cold to them... especially to hungry children.)

We found that in most camps, people's very, very basic needs (food and medical care) were met by NGOs. But by NO means was it a good lifestyle. And one situation that broke our hearts was that of Drieg camp. This camp was so close to town that the government had ordered all of the people to return to their villages or to go to another camp miles away from town. Fearing for their safety, they have refused. Therefore, the gov't has refused to grant permission to any NGOs to serve this camp. If any NGOs would attempt to serve the camp, they would probably be kicked out of the country. The people there have no food, water, medical care... nothing. We talked to women who gather firewood to sell at the market for money, and who have been attacked and raped while doing so.

To this camp we brought a lot of bread and peanuts and water - the simplest food to distribute - and asked for help from those who seemed to be respected in the camp to distribute it. Although we were painfully aware that our small gifts were a drop in a bucket for a camp of about 5,000 people, we felt that the gesture - the human connection - was important. In each camp we somehow ended up getting involved with children's songs and games, and spent a while surrounded by beautiful faces laughing and singing and squealing "OK, OK, OK" - the popular English word - at the "hajawa" - "white people."

While in Nyala, we also met with the South Darfur coordinator of MSF (Doctors Without Borders), Vincent Hoedt of Holland, who gave to us a very detailed explanation of the conflict and how it is both the cause of the NGO presence, but yet it also hinders NGO access. While we were in his office, he got a phone call (on his one day off that week) with the message that new attacks were happening on villages located between town and the camps where his workers were. He had to make the very difficult decision about at what point he should decide to pull his workers out. He was 34 years old.

We also were fortunate enough to meet with a local peace building group called Ayya – which means “mama” in South Darfur. The managing director, Mohammed El Tahir Asil, explained how their group’s main mandate was to STOP THE WAR through building community. They believe in GANDHIAN NONVIOLENCE, and are currently researching the best way to resolve the conflict NONVIOLENTLY. We were thrilled to have met this man and his colleagues, who were outlining their detailed agenda for us. As Catholic Workers, we felt an immediate connection with these people (who said they don’t get paid either!)

This completely LOCAL group has built good relationships with over 90% of the tribal chiefs in the area. They have successfully stopped a few attacks on villages by mediating before the attacks take place. They are quite small, but have a good plan to grow and be more effective. We asked whether they could use the help of internationals – just people, not organizations – who could come and spend a few months at a time to join in the work they are doing, and they responded with a resounding YES. This is one of the only organizations in the country that is challenging the government’s policies (as they are not in danger, like humanitarian NGOs, of losing their ability to serve the IDP population) peacefully, yet effectively.

I have so much more to say. If any of you want to talk to me personally I would love to do that. Also, I am putting together a slide presentation, and am very willing to present to any schools, groups, churches…

The majority of Sudanese people we met kept reiterating the importance both of understanding that the crisis was a political one (not just humanitarian) and of keeping the conflict in international attention. So the more we talk about it and understand it, the better. And the more we support groups like Ayya and the SCC and other Sudanese groups working for peace and justice on the ground, whether with money, prayers, or actual bodies, the better.

Thanks for reading this long email, and supporting me with your thoughts and prayers.

Have a wonderful Christmas.

Brenna


 
 

BIO:  Brenna Cussen is a member of the Saint Peter Claver Catholic Worker community in South Bend and serves as office coordinator of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, where she maintains the website, sends out weekly emails, assist soldiers on the GI Rights Hotline, edits and lays out "The Sign of Peace" quarterly journal, and is organizing a counter-recruiting campaign for St. Joseph County, Indiana.  She is speaking to groups in the South Bend area about her trip and the May trial.  More information on how to stop genocide in Sudan is available at www.sudandivestment.com.  Brenna can be reached by email at brennacussen@yahoo.com

 

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