Darfur, Sudan

SUDAN

Geography of Sudan

Brief History

1956- Independence from Britain and Egypt. Conflicts began, there was a civil war between north and south.

1972- Civil war ended with a peace agreement.

1983- Starts a second Civil war.

2003- Opposition groups (Sudanese liberation Movement / Justice and Equality Movement) rose in Darfur against the government led by the President Bashir. Civil War became worst.

2005- Second civil War ended after 21 years with a peace agreement (United States and African Union helped).

2009- The International Criminal Court arrested Sudan’s President for his role in violence.

2010- Violence and killing increase in Darfur.

(Alessandra Roncal)

What Happened?

In 1972 a peace agreement was signed ending the first civil war, this peace agreement gave southern Sudan a deal of Independence from northern Sudan.

However, a second civil war started in 1983 when the government which was in the north broke the treaty and tried to apply more power over southern Sudan. 

While peace negotiations were going on to end the second civil war, some opposition groups (which were banned in Sudan) appeared in Darfur against the president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

The government responded brutally against the opposition and the determined themselves to crush all the oppositions and eliminate the danger for the government.  This made everything worse, the violence increased notably.

Two main opposition groups emerged in Darfur, the Sudanese liberation movement (SLM) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). Over the curse of the conflict, these groups splited into approximately 30 opposition groups. Many of them were competing with each other for power and influence.

The violence between the opposition groups and the government spread across the region. The government militia targeted civilians and villages that they claim were harboring rebel forces. They used aerial bombing to destroy the villages that they considered threatening for them.

This was how a catastrophic genocide took place destroying many innocent civilian’s homes and leaving them home-less. As well they abused women rapping them and taking something very important from them because of their religion, their honour.
(Lia Rizo Patron)



ROL OF MEDIA IN SUDAN(2003):
After the government took control on Darfur they tried to avoid the media sharing bad information about them. On the Darfur Crisis, the militars start to kill any person that was “suspicious” of being opposition. They rapped women and murder innocent people just to eliminate the opposition groups. It was a total abuse from part of the government’s militarist, but people weren’t informed about this real chaos.

The government took total control on the media. They wanted people to believe the opposite from what was really happening. People on other parts of Sudan started to think what the government wanted them to think. Innocent victims didn’t had word or vote in the whole situation. They couldn’t tell what were the militaries were really doing with them. They killed their families, rapped muscleman women (whose future depend on their virginity), black women, etc. But people weren’t aware of it. The media is the biggest tool of communication in a society, to know other people’s opinions and points of view and without that we can only know one person’s or a group of people’s side. The media also let the audience know about whether something was  wrong or right and in this case the audience only knew what the government determine, which is totally unbiased because we didn’t know what was really happening.

The media has the power to influence millions of people’s lives in the world in every way. In Sudan people start to believe what the media said because it only presented one point of view which we didn’t know was true or false.(Andrea Bosio)