off. The young man now lives a comfortable life in Dinka territory after many years of captivity and enslavement. He described the raid in which he was captured as follows:
I do not recall what I was doing at that moment but I remember hearing the sound of gunfire, people running in different directions, and shouting: “Murahileen have come, Murahileen have come.” Within a short while, the Arabs on horseback were all upon our village of Majak Baai. The people scattered everywhere. All my immediate family ran toward the railway line, but I ran with my other relatives in the direction of the SPLA base. We were running as fast as we could, but the Arabs on their horses were behind us and shooting at us. They killed several people including two of my uncles, Akot and Garang Akot. I stopped for a moment to look at them and the sight of the bullet passing through someone’s head terrified me so much that I ran really fast. But the horses were racing toward me from all directions and I stopped. One of them stopped his horse, got down and came toward me. When I tried to run in the other direction he caught me from behind. The other Arabs arrived and one of them tied my hands with a rope. I was lifted on top of a horse and my legs were tied to the lower end of the saddle. Then they took me through my village, which was set on fire, to meet with the rest of the Arabs who were loading the looted grain on the back of the horses. They tied the rest of the captives to the horses. Then we were marched toward the Kiir River to a location where they had left their livestock. This location, the name of which I cannot recall, had been established as the base from which to stage attacks on various Dinka villages. When we got to this location, there were at least fifty camels carrying ammunition and other supplies. The different groups that had gone to attack the villages regrouped here. It was a good place for them since it had a well for water and the Dinka inhabitants had deserted it long before because of the raids. From here we were taken to Baggara villages north of the Kiir River. The man who caught me, whose name I later came to know as Muhammad Abeid, one day told me that I had to go live with another family and I should regard them as my family from now on. For the next several years, I had no idea about the fate of my family and I was just working for Ibrahim Kheir and his family. He told me that I was to become his son, but I was not treated like a son. I was so upset and sometimes when they treated me like a dog, I wished I had a gun to kill all of them, but I knew in my heart that I would be free some day.21
A local official in Tuic County, Thongjang Awaak, also recalled a horrific incident he had witnessed during the raid in Wunrok in May 1997. An Arab man on horseback had caught a young girl and a calf, tied both of them to the back of the horse and dragged them while being pursued by the SPLA. It was difficult for the horse to speed away, but the man would not let go of the girl and the calf. The SPLA soldiers were unable to shoot at him for fear of striking the girl. He was blocked off from rejoining the rest of the raiding force. His horse was struck from the side and he was eventually killed and the girl was rescued, but the determination shown by this man to kidnap and loot at all cost baffled the SPLA.
Some of the most gruesome stories told by slaves who escaped or gained their freedom in the North and returned to Bahr el-Ghazal have also provided an understanding of the nature of slave life and are the strongest evidence of enslavement. The stories of maltreatment involve hard labor such as herding livestock, agricultural work, domestic service, and even sexual and reproductive coercion. They also include verbal abuse. This exploitation of the slaves occurs extensively throughout the country. The provinces of southern Darfur and western Kordofan, in both rural and urban areas, are the principal areas of widespread enslavement, but other urban centers of slavery include el-Fasher, Nyala, Muglad, and Khartoum.
There are numerous accounts, provided by slaves who have run away and by human rights reports, about the way slaves in northern Sudan are treated. These accounts are reminiscent of the way slaves have always been exploited throughout history. The Dinka girls and women held by Arab families become sexual slaves as well as household domestics and farm workers. Consider the following accounts.
When they raided our village, captured me with my children, and marched us to ed-Da’ein, we were quickly distributed to the relatives of the man who had captured us, and I ended up with another man who had several adult sons. I was told of my daily chores right away and I was made to do everything from milking the cows to cleaning the house, cooking, and washing. What I was not told was that I was to become somebody’s woman. I was not even given to one specific man. Whenever any of them wanted to be with me, he just showed up at night and there was nothing I could do. When I expressed my objection to their advances toward me, I was threatened with gruesome violence. I was told I could have my breast cut off, my children could be killed, or I could die. One man was coming to me so often that I think his wives became outraged. After some time, when I did not know anymore what had happened to my children, I found a way to escape so I could search for them. Now I have heard from others that two of them are in el-Fasher.22
Another woman made the following observations: “During cultivation times, the grown-up Dinka is sent to the farm to cut the weeds from morning to evening, and if a Rizeigi has a son, he will not send him for errands anymore. Only the Dinka child is sent to do these things. Old Dinka women are made to work in the house and on the farm. They wash the dishes and do many household chores. These enslaved Dinkas are given nothing. If they are barefoot they remain so. The Dinka girls who grow up there are made their ‘women’ and the virgin girl who is brought to you is also made a ‘woman.’ ”23
A young woman I interviewed in Turalei in the summer of 1999 provided further illustration. When Teresa Amou Arou was abducted from Bulal in Abyei County at age twelve, her father was killed and her captor, Bakhur Ahmed from the Misseria clan of Awlad Kamil, took her to Chiteb, a Misseria town between Abyei and Muglad, and her name was changed to Zahra. When she was in captivity, she worked on the farm and went to fetch water. Every morning, she took the millet and pounded it in the mortar or ground it on the grinding stone. She went to fetch firewood and cooked the meals every day. She also worked in cutting karkade or hibiscus, drying it and packing it in bags.24 Fearing that she might escape, her captors would not let her go far without the company of her master’s boys. She slept on plastic sheeting in a makeshift hut where she cooked the meals for the family. Her master and his sons abused her sexually, and fearing further physical harm she obeyed their commands. One season, the family moved close to the Kiir River with their cattle, and there, Teresa found an opportunity to escape in 1998. She now lives in Turalei at a boarding school set up by the local community for all the former slave children and supported by the diocese of el-Obeid.25
Sexual exploitation could be regarded as another form of slavery that may have gone unexposed under the pretext of ordinary domestic service. At present, such practices against southern slave women is common. In many instances, the slave master not only demands sexual services from his female slaves, which causes an outrage among his wives,26 but also instructs his female slaves to give sexual lessons to his young sons. This is a practice long reported by Dinka women who worked as domestic servants in Arab Muslim households throughout the 1960s and 1970s.27 The explanation given by some of the women who have experienced this was that, given the Islamic strict separation between boys and girls in public places and between households, the fathers have often found themselves in a dilemma: they want to instill proper Islamic behavior in their sons, such as maintaining a distance from women, while they worry that their sons might become homosexuals if they have no exposure to members of the opposite sex. It is granted that slave women have no right to object to any sexual advances by the master and his sons. But the female slaves of modern-day Sudan are forced not only to tolerate sexual advances by the masters’ sons, but also to arouse the boy’s sexual urges toward females. Many testimonies provided by freed slave women attest to a myriad of sexual abuses by slaveholders and their young sons. One young former slave woman, whom I interviewed in Warawar in the summer of 1998, said that given the horrible atrocities that the Arabs have often committed during the raiding, she could expect sexual coercion. “But to be [gang-raped] by an old man and his children is just not human. Where else on earth do members of one family force themselves on one woman. Even cattle know their sexual boundaries.”28
Sexual abuse
