Swiss-Based Rights Group Helps Buy Freedom of 1,050 Slaves in Sudan

GENEVA —  A Swiss-based human rights group said Thursday that it had bought the freedom of 1,050 slaves in Sudan this month, mainly children, redeeming them for $50 per person with the help of European and North American financial backers.

The Zurich-based Christian Solidarity International, or CSI, also said that Sudanese forces were mobilizing ahead of a fresh wave of “slave raids” expected next month in the famine-hit region of Bahr el Ghazal.

Much of the fighting on the government side is done by local militias. Unpaid, their bounty is abducted women and children, for the most part, who are often taken to camps where slaves are bought and sold.

The CSI statement, issued in Geneva, urged U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson to launch an independent investigation into child slavery in Sudan.

The 1,050 slaves were “the largest number” known to have been freed at one time, the group said. In all, the group has liberated 5,066 slaves since 1995.

Funds came from groups including the STOP campaign of American schoolchildren based in Colorado, the American Anti-Slavery Group, the Canadian-based Slave Redemption Project and the Confessing Church Movement in Germany, the group said.

“The armed forces of the government of Sudan systematically capture and use the Christian and animist black African slaves--particularly child slaves--as one of the most potent instruments of its declared jihad [holy war] against the communities that resist its totalitarian policies of forced Islamization,” it added.

A U.S. State Department report said the information it has received about the taking of slaves “indicates the direct and general involvement” of Sudan’s army and militias “backed by the government.”