Eng James Aguer Sudan

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NOMINEE • Pages 41– 45

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James Aguer (

When James Aguer Alic was 20, children in his village in southern Sudan were kidnapped to be slaves. His mother was killed when she refused to give up her little daughter. James fled together with his other siblings, and today he saves children from slavery.

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fter the attack of the militia, James and his brothers and sisters fled to the capital, Khartoum, where they stayed with relatives in a refugee camp. Many people there talked about how children had been captured and taken to northern Sudan to become slaves.

“We must do something,” said James. “We must free them!”

One night, James and eight other men met in secret. If the security police had known that they were meeting to discuss freeing slaves they would all have been sent to jail.

“I know where they’ve taken the children,” James said. “To the Arab peoples in Darfur and Kordofan. I intend to go there. Will any of you come with me?”

Several of the Dinka men answered at once. “Of course. We’ll come with

you!” But two of them were hesitant.

“If they find out that we want to free the children, they’ll kill us,” they said.

“But if we don’t do it, who will?” James asked. ‘I’m going there even if it kills me.”

James and the others started planning.

“We must dress like Arabs, so no one suspects why we’re there. We’ll buy long white jellabiya shirts and white caps so we look like Arabs.”

A few days later, they boarded a train dressed in their Arab clothing. They sat

in different coaches so that no one would suspect they were together. When they arrived, they went in different directions, each to a village where they knew Dinka children were held as slaves.

James felt a bit odd in his Arab clothing, but he soon noticed that the disguise worked. No one noticed him as he wandered between the villages and the tent camps.

When people asked him what he was doing, he would answer, “I’m searching for my cows”. But instead James and his friends were searching for slave children. When they

Why is James a nominee?

James Aguer Alic has been nominated as WCPRC Decade Child Rights Hero 2009 for his stubborn fight against child slavery in Sudan. Children, who are kidnapped by militiamen, are forced to work from sunrise to sunset. They are forced to sleep outdoors with the animals, eating leftovers, and they are beaten and whipped. After 20 years of struggle, James and his helpers have liberated around 3000 children, and their fight to free the rest of the children goes on. James has been imprisoned 33 times, and four of his colleagues have been killed while trying to free children. Today James and his colleagues have the support of Sudan’s government for the freedom of slave children.

James with some of his Arab helpers.  comic strip by Magnus Bergmar (text) and K arin Södergren (illustr ations)

STOP, or I’ll shoot you!

MUM!

Read the whole comic strip about how James saves slave children at www.worldschildrensprize.org

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saw a dark-skinned child tending goats or cows or fetching water near an Arab village, they would ask the child’s name, where he or she came from and what he or she was doing there. They also asked if the child knew of other Dinka children in the area. The group also made friends with Arabs, who helped them gather names.

James always took new paths so that no one would recognise him or start to wonder what he was doing.

Each evening, James and his friends would meet to discuss what they’d found out during the day. They discovered that there were far more slave children than they had first thought, and wrote down all their names.

When they had gathered a number of names in an area, James would go to the sultan, the Arab leader there.

“Most honoured sultan! I know that you do not think slavery is a good thing, but your people have enslaved many of my people, the Dinkas. Many of our children are the slaves of families in this area,” James would say politely.

A good many of the sultans did think that slavery was wrong, and helped James to free the children.

But others threatened him, and ordered him never to show his face there again. 

James

imprisoned 33 times Moses and Elisabeth, pictured here, were kidnapped to be slaves, but James Aguer Alic saved them. For 20 years, James has been fighting to free thousands of slave children. It has often been a dangerous task.

S

udan, which means ‘the black people’s country’ in Arabic, is the largest country in Africa. The differences between northern and southern Sudan are very great. They’re almost like two different countries.

There are huge deserts and pastures in the north, as well as the capital city, Khartoum. The people there, at least half of the country’s 30 million inhabitants, belong to various Arab peoples and speak Arabic. Most of them are Muslims. In the south there are savannahs, swamps and green pastures. There, the majority of people (some three million) are Dinkas, and speak Dinka. Most of them are Christians or follow traditional religions.

The Dinka people have been

 TEXT: GUNILL A HAMNE PHOTOs : KIM NAYLOR

I’ll take the woman, the boy and…

hardest hit by slavery.

People in the south are poorer, although the land there holds valuable natural resources such as oil, gold, uranium and water. The civil war was partly because of these natural resources, and religion. Villages were bombed in southern Sudan, where government soldiers collaborated with the militia. The militia kidnapped some 40,000 women and children and enslaved them.

These children have been forced to work for Arab families in the north, sleeping outdoors with the animals and being beaten and whipped.

The rescuers James has been saving children from slavery for 20 years. So far, he has rescued

I’ll take the other boys!

5000 slaves, 3000 of them children.

“It’s my people’s children that they’ve kidnapped,” says James. “Nothing can stop me from continuing to search for them. If we don’t, they’ll continue being captives.”

James has been imprisoned 33 times for fighting for the rights of enslaved children, and four of his colleagues have been murdered while trying to free children.

At first, Sudan’s government denied that there was slavery in the country. But it has changed its policy and set up an organisation, CEAWC, to put an end to slavery. James and his helpers are members of CEAWC. 

I’m glad that mum’s with me.

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Manol

enslaved and bullied When Manol was ten, he was forced to become a slave. The slave owner’s sons and their friends bullied him.

But then one day...

M

anol’s experience as a slave begins early one morning, when the militiamen ride into his village.

Manol, his mother, father and sister flee to the other side of the dry riverbed. But the other side is full of militiamen on horseback and soon the family is surrounded. All the people in the village are made to line up and their cows and goats are herded together. Then the long march begins.

They walk and walk.

They are given no food or water.

“I must keep up,” Manol thinks. He sees his mother carrying his little sister. She looks so tired. “Please, mum, you’ve got to keep up, please...”

Dangerous escape At nightfall, they make camp. Suddenly three militiamen ride away at a gallop

across the savannah. After a while, they return. Behind the horses, two men are being dragged along.

“This is what happens to those who try to flee!” shouts one of the riders, and kills the men.

The next morning, Manol’s mother whispers that his father escaped during the night. “No,” Manol thinks, “They’ll kill him!”

When the soldiers discover that Manol’s dad has fled, they ride off. After a few hours, they return without his father. He’s still alive!

After six more days of marching, they arrive at the slave market. An Arab takes Manol as his slave, while Manol’s mother and sister are sold to another man.

After three days, Manol and his master arrive at a huge tent camp where they join the man’s wife and five children. One of the master’s sons says:

Manol swings in the mango tree, pushed by his friend Valentino who was a slave too.

“You’re our slave, aren’t you?” He spits on the ground in front of Manol.

The Arab’s wife takes him to a place behind one of the tents where the goats are crowded into a fenced enclosure.

“You’ll sleep here,” she says and points at the ground. Manol gets neither a mattress nor a blanket.

The nights are the worst.

That’s when he thinks about his mum and dad. “Where are they now? Are they alive?” he wonders, gazing up at the stars. He dreams about home and their big mango tree.

Axe in the foot Manol gets up early. He is cold after a night in the goat

pen. He gets no breakfast and has to start work straight away. First he washes up, then tidies the tent and fetches water. Then he leads the cows to pasture.

The pasture is far away and the boys from the surrounding camps do all they can to make Manol’s life a misery.

“Look at the slave! Look how dirty he is! That’s why he has to sleep outdoors. He stinks, too!” the boys shout, and drive their cows straight into Manol’s herd.

A couple of boys approach him threateningly. They shove and kick him so he can’t keep his herd in order.

The other boys chase his cows, so that they run in the wrong direction, into the other herds.

Your mother is dead.

Don’t try to escape!

Every night I think of mum and dad, and I cry.

Night after night, my body trembles.

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Manol makes a fire on his family’s farm.

“No, no! Stop it!” cries Manol.

Manol manages to gather all the cows but one. What will he tell his master when he returns to the camp?

“You little swine,” the master shouts when he sees that a cow is missing. He throws an axe at Manol’s feet, opening up a ten-centimetre-long cut.

“If this ever happens again, I swear... Pen the goats and fetch some water!”

Manol is so hungry he can hardly walk. All day long he only gets water to drink, and at night he gets a few scraps to eat alone outside the tent. He is always hungry.

Saved by James The family’s children can do whatever they like to Manol and the master and his wife say nothing. The children beat him, say cruel things and tease him because he has no parents. One of the

boys drives his spear into Manol’s knee, giving him a long scar.

Manol doesn’t believe he’ll ever see his family again. He’ll be called slave forever, and beaten like a dog. But one day after more than two years, a stranger comes and talks to his master, then takes Manol with him and leaves the camp.

“Am I to be his slave now?” Manol wonders as he walks alongside the tall man in a white jellabiya robe and

turban. They stop at each camp they pass and fetch other slave children as they go along. Manol recognises some of them from home, and at last he can speak Dinka again.

That night when they pitch camp, the tall man roasts a newly slaughtered goat over the fire. Finally the children fall sleep on full stomachs for the first time in years, huddled together for warmth.

After six days’ march, they come to a large marketplace where Dinkas and Arabs trade in cows, sugar, fabric, tea and medicines. It is also a Peace Market, where freed slaves are brought, and parents come to search for their children. Manol and the other children are told to sit under a tree and wait. As soon as word gets out that they are there, more and more adults arrive. They walk around the tree to see if their children are in the group.

Manol looks around, trying to spot the faces of his mum or dad. Several hours pass. At last, in the afternoon, he hears a familiar voice: “Manol! Manol! It’s you, my boy!” Manol’s dad runs

That way, we can move about without arousing suspicion.

The children are prisoners of the Arabs.

I am a Dinka, the same as most of the abducted children. But Arabs help us too.

We dress like the people who have taken the children.

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Supermodel

ALEK

and the slave girl

The mango tree shades them as Manol plays with his sister.

towards him and lifts him into the air. They hold each other for a long time.

James saves sister “Where are your mother and sister?” his dad asks.

“I don’t know,” Manol answers, and grows sad again. “We got separated after you disappeared that night.”

Three months later, Manol’s mum and little sister are freed by James Aguer.

Today, the family is finally

together again.

“Imagine how nice it is to be home and sit under the mango tree again,” says Manol. “If I had some money, I’d buy a cow, a goat and some clothes. The Arabs stole all 25 of our cows and our goats too. And I wish I could go to school.”

“I want to learn all about farming so I can plant trees and durra. I want loads of trees when I grow up.

Without trees, life is pretty boring, isn’t it?” he asks his

friend Valentino, who also used to be a slave.

Manol would rather think about the future than the past. There’s so much he wants to do now that he is no longer a slave. 

Where do you come from and what’s your name?

Alek Wek is one of the world’s most famous fashion models. She is also a refugee from southern Sudan – and she’ll never forget it. Alek is a patron and Honorary Adult Friend of the WCPRC. Here she is with Abouk, who was freed from slavery by James Aguer.

Even though Alek is now a supermodel, she cannot forget her friends and relatives in Sudan, who have been forced to live through civil war and famine. She often talks about the situation there and helps to raise money.

I’ve met five abducted children.

I’m called Adut.

I was abducted and taken here.

What did he want?

He spoke Dinka…

And I’ve met three!

Let’s visit the Sultan tomorrow.

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