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U.S. group frees 5,000 slaves in Sudan

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Monday, March 27, 2000

WASHINGTON -- A U.S. group said it has bought the freedom of nearly 5,000 slaves in Sudan.

The Corona, Calif.-Christian Solidarity International said it freed 4,968 slaves between March 9-19. The group said representatives launched a clandestine visit to the borderlands between northern and southern Sudan to negotiate the freedom of the slaves.

The group paid the equivalent of $35 per slave. The slaves -- most of them Christians and animists -- were captured during raids by the fundamentalist National Islamic Front.

"The raids are one of the NIF's most devastating instruments of the declared jihad [holy war] which it is waging against ethnic and religious minorities that resist its policies of forced Islamization and Arabization," the U.S. group said.

Since 1995, the group said it has freed 30,021 slaves and returned them to their families.

The group said the redeemed slaves reported that during the raids their villages were torched and the men shot dead. The women and children were forced to walk for days to the north, where they were beaten and raped.

"They are routinely subjected to forced labor, sexual abuse -- including female genital excision -- forced Islamization, beatings, minimum food rations, death threats and racist verbal abuse," the group said.

CSI said more than 100,000 Christian and animists are still being held as slaves in Sudan. These include people held in government concentration camps.

Monday, March 27, 2000

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