US State Department's Estimate of Sudanese Slaves "Far Too Low" (Press Release)

US State Department's Estimate of Sudanese Slaves "Far Too Low"

The head of Sudan’s “Dinka Chiefs Committee” (DCC), James Aguir, rejects as “far too low” the U.S. State Department’s estimate of 14,000 as the number of enslaved Dinka women and children. Christian Solidarity International (CSI), the American Anti-Slavery Group and other abolitionists call on President George W. Bush to establish an independent commission to ascertain the facts about Sudanese slavery and oversee its eradication.

The State Department’s 2005 Trafficking in Persons Report, produced by the Office for Monitoring and Combating Trafficking (OMCT), estimates that only 14,000 Dinkas were abducted by Baggara Arab tribesmen during 22 years of civil war. The OMCT, headed by Ambassador John Miller, cites Aguir’s committee as the source of this figure. Speaking to CSI, Aguir denied that he was the source of this erroneous information.

Aguir claims that the DCC has identified 40,000 Dinka slaves since 1986. But the true number of enslaved Dinkas is far higher, he says. Aguir accepts a 200,000-plus figure estimated by Dinka Civil Commissioners of northern Bahr El Ghazal — the area most severely affected by slave raids. “It is the Commissioners in the area”, Aguir says, “who know best the fate of their people.”

The DCC has been allowed by the Government of Sudan (GOS) to register slaves only in certain towns and villages in Dafur and Kordofan, but not to make a comprehensive slavery survey of the entire country. The DCC, whose operations are controlled by the GOS, have a particularly difficult time reaching the remote farms and cattle camps where most Dinka slaves are held.

The DCC is made up of Khartoum-based Dinka community leaders. Until last year, the civil war made it impossible for DCC members to visit most parts of Southern Sudan. Since 1999, the DCC has been co-opted into the Sudanese government’s Committee for the Eradication of the Abduction of Women and Children (CEAWC), which funds and supervises it.

Responding to the 2005 report, Dr. John Eibner of CSI said:

“The State Department appears to have whitewashed the grisly reality of Sudanese slavery. The trafficking report portrays Sudanese slavery exclusively as a by-product of ‘inter-tribal’ conflict and fails to identify the Government of Sudan as responsible for the revival of this evil institution. It says that Dinka slaves ‘frequently’ become part of the abductor’s, [i.e., master’s] family, while only ‘some’ were used for forced domestic labor and/or sexual exploitation. It gives an incredibly low estimate of the number of slaves. It consistently uses the insulting euphemism ‘abductee’ to identify slaves. The Islamist regime in Khartoum — a regime that currently enslaves Black Africans in Darfur as an instrument of genocide — will be delighted with this State Department report, and interpret it as confirmation that slavery — an internationally recognized ‘crime against humanity’ - can be committed with impunity.”

Upon publication of the trafficking report, Ambassador Miller said its goal was “not to punish but to stimulate government action to end modern-day slavery.”