For Sudan Slaves, Freedom at a Cost

[NoPasaran]

MALUAL KON, Sudan — The map of Majok's life is carved on his body in scars. They trace the vicious beatings, his castration, the time he was left hanging by a rope around his neck. But grief and trauma have erased nearly every other scrap of his boyhood story.

He has no idea of his age or his family name. From his initiation marks and coloring, it is obvious he is a member of the dominant Dinka tribe of southern Sudan. But he says he is an Arab and that the man who kept him as a slave in northern Sudan is his father.

"I do not know whether I am an adult or a child," he said, puzzled, as a small crowd of villagers here snickered at his confusion. Bereft of his identity, family or home, he can imagine nothing of his future except that, his manhood stolen from him, he can never marry. He hangs his head in silent distress at this thought.

"All I do is eat and sleep, eat and sleep," said Majok, who was brought to southern Sudan in January by the Commission for the Eradication of Abduction of Women and Children, or CEAWC, an organization set up by the Sudanese government in 1999 after an international outcry over the enslavement of southerners by northerners, who speak Arabic and identify themselves as Arabs.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-slavery29mar29.story