Your discretion is advised!
1. 1st video clip: SPLA TAKES HEGLIG
2. 2nd video clip: SPLA Storms Panthou (Heglig)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=lXIbdNy9SSM#!
Archive for April 25, 2012
How SPLA Took Paanthou/Heglig (raw war video)
Posted: April 25, 2012 by PaanLuel Wël Media Ltd. in VideosTags: Spla takes heglig
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South Sudan To Get Aid From China; But No Oil Deal
Posted: April 25, 2012 by PaanLuel Wël Media Ltd. in Junub SudanBy JANE PERLEZ
BEIJING — China has welcomed the president of South Sudan and agreed to provide bank loans and humanitarian aid, but it has stopped short of moving forward on an oil pipeline, a sign of the delicate position Beijing finds itself in as the biggest energy investor in both the new nation of South Sudan and its bitter foe, Sudan.
As the two new nations continued to edge toward outright war this week and Salva Kiir, the president of South Sudan, cut short his trip to China, the government here urged both sides to use international mediation.
Before oil-rich Sudan was partitioned into two countries last year, China financed the pipelines and refineries in the north to carry and process the oil that largely lies in the south.
Energy analysts say Sudanese oil makes up only 3 to 4 percent of China’s total oil imports, but China, traditionally reluctant to get involved in foreign disputes, is now at the center of attention in a looming conflict between two developing countries that depend on its economic largess.
A new Chinese special envoy, Zhong Jianhua, a former ambassador to South Africa, visited Sudan and South Sudan last month as China tried to maintain neutrality.
The United States also has a special envoy, Princeton Lyman, a former ambassador to South Africa, and the two diplomats have been in touch, a senior Chinese official said Wednesday.
“We hope the China-United States cooperation will pay off,” said Cui Tiankai, a vice foreign minister, at a briefing at the Foreign Ministry in Beijing.
In the 1990s, when China first invested in Sudan as a source of oil, Beijing cultivated a close relationship with President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who has been charged by the International Criminal Court with orchestrating genocide in Darfur.
The United States scorned Mr. Bashir but maintained close ties with the rebels in southern Sudan, and supported the breakaway province’s claim to statehood.
Mr. Kiir’s visit to China showed that Beijing was seeking to secure and expand its footprint in South Sudan’s oil sector, said Zach Vertin, senior analyst on Sudan and South Sudan for the International Crisis Group in Nairobi, Kenya. The China National Petroleum Corporation is the primary Chinese operator in South Sudan, Mr. Vertin said.
South Sudan stopped producing oil in late January after it accused Sudan of stealing some of its oil meant for export. The tensions have since erupted into violence, with Sudanese war planes dropping bombs and South Sudanese forces rushing in at one point to occupy an oil-producing region, Heglig, in Sudan.
As a chief partner to the warring sides, China has also found itself a target.
In January, 29 Chinese workers involved in building a $63 million road financed by the Export-Import Bank of China were abducted by rebels in the oil-rich region of South Kordofan Province in Sudan.
In February, South Sudan, angered that China was not sufficiently on its side, expelled the president of the Chinese oil consortium based in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.
Mr. Kiir’s trip to Beijing was interpreted as an effort, in part, to secure financing for a pipeline that South Sudan would like to build through Kenya to a port on the Indian Ocean. The new route would give South Sudan’s oil access to a port other than Port Sudan, located on the Red Sea, the main exit point for oil from the south.
China would be a logical financier for such a pipeline, said Li Xinfeng, a researcher at theInstitute of West Asian and African Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. But any decision by China would be made on a commercial, not political, basis, he said.
While the visit of Mr. Kiir showed that China was interested in improving its relationship with South Sudan, Beijing did not want to appear to be taking sides by announcing a major pipeline investment as the two countries seemed headed for war.
Bree Feng contributed research.
| Opinion: World must step in to avert South Sudan crisis CNN International By Pauline Ballaman, special to CNN Thousands of people fleeing the bitter conflict in the border areas of Sudan and South Sudan have found a temporary home in the Jamam refugee camp. Editor’s note: Editor’s note: Pauline Ballaman heads Oxfam’s … |
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| South Sudan To Get Aid From China; No Oil Deal New York Times BEIJING — China has welcomed the president of South Sudan and agreed to provide bank loans and humanitarian aid, but it has stopped short of moving forward on an oil pipeline, a sign of the delicate position Beijing finds itself in as the biggest … |
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| Sudan And Republic Of South Sudan Debate Borders NPR Bombs fell on towns in the Republic of South Sudan this week, less than a year after the country declared its independence from Sudan. At issue is a disputed border than runs through some of the region’s richest oil fields. Robert Siegel talks with … |
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| Let’s Temper Our Enthusiasm for South Sudan’s EAC Membership AllAfrica.com By Sunny Ntayombya, 25 April 2012 Today, the 24th Extraordinary Meeting of the East African Community’s Council of Ministers, taking place in Arusha, will start discussing the set up of a verification committee to probe if South Sudan meets the … |
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| South Sudan troubles not unique among new nations STLtoday.com Residents try to extinguish fires still burning in the smouldering remains of a market in Rubkona near Bentiu in South Sudan Monday, April 23, 2012. A boy was killed and at least two people were wounded Monday when Sudanese aircraft bombed an area near … |
Opinion: World must step in to avert South Sudan crisis
Posted: April 25, 2012 by PaanLuel Wël Media Ltd. in Featured ArticlesTags: Jamam Refugee Camp, oxfam, Pauline Ballma, refugees in south sudan, south sudan
By Pauline Ballaman, special to CNN
April 25, 2012
Thousands of people fleeing the bitter conflict in the border areas of Sudan and South Sudan have found a temporary home in the Jamam refugee camp. STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled conflict in Sudan, South Sudan border region
- Many have taken shelter in Jamam camp, but water supplies are running low
- Oxfam worker Pauline Ballaman says international community must take action
- Ballaman: “People need peace, and to be able to go home”
Editor’s note: Editor’s note: Pauline Ballaman heads Oxfam’s emergency response in the Jamam refugee camp in South Sudan. The world’s newest nation was created in July 2011 when it declared independence from Sudan: now the two nations are in conflict. Nearly 37,000 refugees have fled to the camp since late last year, escaping the ongoing conflict in Sudan’s Blue Nile state, with more expected as the fighting spreads along the border. More than 100,000 refugees from the bloodshed and the parallel conflict in Southern Kordofan are now in South Sudan and Ethiopia. Hundreds of thousands more have been internally displaced within Sudan.
Oxfam’s Pauline Ballman works in the Jamam Refugee Camp in South Sudan
Jamam refugee camp, South Sudan (CNN) — The dried up cattle pond is only a few meters off the red road that runs through Jamam refugee camp. It’s a huge hole in the ground, long emptied by the blazing sun. At the bottom of this pit women and children dig with cups and bowls in the smelly, spongy mud for the little dirty water that seeps into their shallow wells.
Jamam refugee camp is in a desperate situation. All day Oxfam trucks water from the very few working boreholes in or near the camp to tanks close to the road. Women wait in the heat for up to four hours twice a day, next to their long queues of buckets and jerry cans. Men with sticks and whips police the lines. Fights break out all the time. No one has to ask why. There is simply not enough water and we are running out of options and we are running out of time.
This is the daily struggle that is the human face of peace failing in the Sudans. The conflict in Blue Nile has been going on for months, and now in the past few weeks fighting between Sudan and South Sudan threatens to further destabilize the wider border region these refugees still live in.
Like a cruel reminder of the conflict that the refugees fled, unidentified Antonovs — the kind of planes that bombed their villages in Blue Nile — flew over Jamam camp three times in the past few weeks. In a panic, refugees ran and sought safety in holes in the ground.
To truly understand why peace is so important, the world needs to remember it’s not just the fighting that matters but also the enormous suffering it causes those who have already been forced to flee it. The interrupted lives, deadened by displacement in the hot, unblinking heat. In barely established camps like Jamam there’s nothing to do but wait.
In Jamam — where water is rationed well below people’s needs, enough only for cooking and bathing – that struggle has become a crisis that is about to deepen as the rainy season approaches.
How to get enough water? That is the burning question, but the ground here has few answers. There is just not enough water to cope with so many new people — and now there are fears that more may arrive as conflict spreads. We’ve done a hydro-geological survey and we’ve drilled for new boreholes. We have even resorted to water divining — a traditional method using metal rods in the hope of detecting ground water. Only one drill has produced any water, but very little.
We were completely reliant on four overworked boreholes pumping 22 hours a day. One of these collapsed last week, and now there are just three. Rationing has been tightened again. It was a grim evening in our base in the camp that night. We ate our meal to the loud hum of the generator with our hearts in our stomachs.
The refugees were settled here partly because the host community was welcoming. But as water sources run out or dry up and more and more refugees arrive, competition for water is beginning to cause conflict here too. Fights break out at water points. The pressure is intense and I fear it will get worse.
The heavy rains are coming, bringing fresh problems. It rained last week for three hours, long enough to destroy many of the flimsy shelters of plastic sheeting, sheets, or straw the refugees have constructed under trees. Whole families were left exposed.
The rains will flood large parts of the camp, bringing the threat of disease and making trucking water in very difficult — perhaps impossible as the roads deteriorate into impassable mud slicks. Drilling in the rains is also near impossible.
It is hard to express how miserable the mud of Upper Nile is. It’s a kind of black clay that sticks to everything, the stuff of quagmires. Largely impermeable, water sits on top of it, a massive health risk not just encouraging malaria but also water-borne diseases including cholera.
Humanitarian agencies working in the camp are looking into options including relocating a large number of the refugees to a new site, and putting in a pipeline that will hopefully mean the water can reach the camp more reliably when the roads fall apart.
But there’s only one real solution. People need peace and people need to be able to go home.
Unless all parties involved in the fighting stop and focus on long-term peace then I fear that the situation in Sudan and South Sudan will reverse to how it was during wartime, Africa’s longest civil war, the most recent phase of which lasted 22 years and left around 2 million people dead.
All that progress made in the years following the 2005 peace agreement risks being lost. The international community played a major role in brokering that peace — now is the time to make sure it lasts. The people in Jamam, and across the two countries, deserve to be free from the constant threat of crisis.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/25/opinion/opinion-oxfam-ballaman-south-sudan-refugee-crisis/
South Sudan leader cancels part of China trip to attend to urgent matters at home
Posted: April 25, 2012 by PaanLuel Wël Media Ltd. in Junub SudanTags: Coup Rumors in Juba
South Sudanese Leader Shortens China Trip
VOA News
Photo: Reuters
South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir Mayardit (L) and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao toast during a signing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, April 24, 2012.
South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir is cutting short a trip to China because of what a Chinese official called “domestic issues.”
Kiir had planned to remain in the country until Saturday. He met with the National People’s Congress chairman Wu Bangguo Wednesday, who said it was unfortunate the South Sudanese leader would be leaving and canceling a trip to Shanghai.
It was not clear when Kiir will depart China. He held talks Tuesday with Chinese President Hu Jintao, and said Sudan’s bombings of southern territory amount to a declaration of war against his country.
China has urged both sides to settle their issues through peaceful negotiations, and said it is sending an envoy to the region to promote talks.
Tuesday, the United Nations Security Council called for an immediate end to fighting between Sudan and South Sudan.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said U.N. officials briefed the Security Council, noting that the withdrawal of South Sudanese troops (SPLA) from the oil town of Heglig was initially encouraging, but has resulted in increased bombings by Sudan.
“Council members welcome the withdrawal from Heglig by the SPLA, demanded an immediate halt to aerial bombardments by the Sudanese Armed Forces and urged an immediate cease-fire and a return to the negotiating table,” Rice said.
The ambassador said the U.N. Mission in South Sudan confirmed the bombings in Unity state killed at least 16 civilians and injured 34 others.
Tuesday, the African Union gave the two countries 90 days to settle their disputes over oil, citizenship and boundary issues or face binding international arbitration.
South Sudan’s deputy defense minister, Majak D’Agoot said the next few days will be “crucial” to avoiding an all-out war.
The White House condemned Sudan’s military incursions into South Sudan, Tuesday. White House spokesman Jay Carney said the United States calls on both governments to agree to an immediate cease-fire and recommit to negotiations.
South Sudan’s military has been sending reinforcements to the border with Sudan. Military officials said they were preparing defensive positions to respond to any further provocation from Khartoum.
Sudan and South Sudan have been on the edge of full-scale war after SPLA forces withdrew from Heglig, which they occupied for 10 days earlier this month.
Juba claims the SPLA left the area in response to international pressure, while Khartoum claims it retook control by force.
Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, visited Heglig Monday to demonstrate that the territory was under his forces’ control.
The two sides had previously fought a 21-year civil war that killed more than 2 million people. The war ended with a 2005 peace agreement that included an independence referendum for the south.
South Sudan slams media “lies” on Kiir’s return from China Amid Coup Rumors in Juba.
April 26, 2012 (JUBA) – South Sudan on Thursday forcefully denied reports that growing dissent at home has prompted the country’s president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, to return from China earlier than originally scheduled.
- FILE – South Sudan’s Media Minister Barnaba Benjamin Marial (REUTERS)
Kiir began an official visit to China on Tuesday amid growing tension with his northern neighbour Sudan following South Sudan’s brief occupation of the disputed Heglig region two weeks ago.
South Sudan says it withdrew troops from Heglig in response to international pressure whereas Sudan says the area was reclaimed by force.
The presidential visit was officially announced to be five days in length but a Chinese official said on Wednesday that Kiir has had to cancel a planned visit to Shanghai city due to “domestic pressure.”
“It is unfortunate that you have to shorten your stay in China due to domestic issues and are not going to Shanghai,” China’s parliamentary chief Wu Bangguo told Kiir as the two men began talks in the presence of journalists.
But South Sudan’s information minister and government’s spokesman, Barnaba Marial Benjamin, has accused the media of spreading false reports about the reason of the president’s decision to return home.
Speaking at a question-and-answer program hosted by the Juba-based Radio Bakhita on Thursday’s morning, Benjamin accused some media outlets of “propagating lies” about Kiir’s decision to return home.
He added that “some newspapers in Khartoum and other international media are reporting that president Kiir is cutting his trip [short] because of domestic matters. Some of them including Radio France International [RFI] have gone [as] far [as] to claim president Kiir cut short his visit because there is a coup. This is not true.”
Benjamin explained that the arrangement with China was for Kiir to stay for “three to four days” while the remaining days were to be completed by members of his accompanying delegation.
He turned to defend Kiir’s decision to withdraw troops from Heglig, describing it as “a tactical” move to “win back trust and diplomatic relations” with friends of South Sudan.
“We have gained trust and diplomatic relations as well as moral and political supports after pulling out troops from Panthou [Heglig]” the minister said, calling on the public to support the decision.
South Sudan’s alleged decision to withdraw from Heglig has faced internal opposition from major civil society organisations which have threatened to stage demonstrations against what they view as an unpopular decision.
Even some veterans of the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) faulted the decision.
Lual Diing Wol, one of the SPLM’s founding members, told reporters at his residence in Juba on Wednesday that he would not have approved withdrawal of the troops from Panthou if he was consulted.
“I was not consulted because president [Kiir] knows I would have definitely not endorsed it. Our troops would have withdrawn only if the international peacekeeping troops from credible countries were deployed. In this way we would have no cases of Sudan using the area as spring board to launch ground attacks on the positions of our civilian population in Unity State” said Wol
http://www.sudantribune.com/South-Sudan-slams-media-lies-on,42405
| South Sudanese Leader Shortens China Trip Voice of America April 25, 2012 South Sudanese Leader Shortens China Trip VOA News South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir is cutting short a trip to China because of what a Chinese official called “domestic issues.” Kiir had planned to remain in the country until Saturday. |
| South Sudan president accuses Sudan of declaring war Local 10 South Sudan’s president accused Sudan of declaring war on his nation as tensions between the two neighbors intensified, sparking fears of a return to conflict over unresolved oil and border issues. President Salva Kiir made the comments during a visit … |
| South Sudan president in China seeking diplomatic support in conflict with … Sudan Tribune April 24, 2012 (KHARTOUM) – The president of South Sudan Salva Kiir pleaded the case of his country with China saying that Khartoum has declared war on Juba as he started a five day visit to Beijing. “It [this visit] comes at a very critical moment for … |
| South Sudan troubles not unique among new nations Fox News South Sudan emerged into the world as a new nation less than a year ago and already it is at the brink of war with its archenemy Sudan, with soldiers from both sides carrying out incursions and Sudan bombing the south with warplanes. |
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| South Sudan frees prisoners to defuse tensions CNBC.com JUBA/BEIJING (Reuters) – South Sudan freed Sudanese prisoners of war on Wednesday in a gesture it hopes will help defuse tensions between Khartoum and Juba whose armies have been embroiled in escalating cross-border fighting that has threatened to tip … |
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| AU Gives Sudan, South Sudan 90 Days to Reach Peace Deal Voice of America April 24, 2012 AU Gives Sudan, South Sudan 90 Days to Reach Peace Deal Peter Heinlein | Addis Ababa The African Union on Tuesday gave Sudan and South Sudan 90 days to settle their disputes over oil, citizenship and boundary issues or face binding … |
| South Sudan president: Sudan has ‘declared war’ Pioneer Press By TOM ODULA AP South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir, right, reviews honor guard with Chinese President Hu Jintao, left, during a welcoming ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, Tuesday, April 24, 2012. NAIROBI, Kenya—South Sudan’s … |
| National / World Briefs – South Sudan: North has ‘declared war’ Winston-Salem Journal South Sudan’s president said its northern neighbor has “declared war” on the world’s newest nation just hours after Sudanese jets dropped eight bombs onto South Sudan on Tuesday. President Salva Kiir’s comments, made during a trip to China, … |
| South Sudan president accuses Sudan of declaring war CNN By Faith Karimi, CNN South Sudanese Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin said rival Sudan began a series of attacks Sunday morning. (CNN) — South Sudan’s president accused Sudan of declaring war on his nation as tensions between the two … |
| South Sudan Says Sudan Strikes Again New York Times KAMPALA, Uganda — As aerial bombardments continued in the border region between Sudan andSouth Sudan on Tuesday, the South Sudanese president, Salva Kiir, met with President Hu Jintao of China, a crucial friend to both nations, saying that Sudan had … |
| South Sudan Says More Civilians Displaced by Aerial Bombardment Voice of America April 24, 2012 South Sudan Says More Civilians Displaced by Aerial Bombardment Mugume Davis Rwakaringi The government of South Sudan said thousands of people are packing up their belongings and leaving their homes after weeks of intense fighting and … |
| South Sudan president says Sudan has ‘declared war’ after Sudanese jets drop … Washington Post NAIROBI, Kenya — South Sudan’s president said its northern neighbor has “declared war” on the world’s newest nation, just hours after Sudanese jets dropped eight bombs on his country. President Salva Kiir’s comments, made Tuesday during a trip to … |
| South Sudan leader cancels part of China trip Monterey County Herald AP BEIJING—China’s Foreign Ministry says the president of South Sudan has canceled the Shanghai leg of his China trip amid the rising threat of war at home. Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin did not clarify Wednesday whether Salva Kiir had cut short his … |
PaanLuel Wël Media Ltd - South Sudan 