Four million are starving to death and a genocide is taking place in South Sudan — but President Obama has not acted, nor has he heeded former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s advice, so a hunger strike in front of the White House is the only option left, said human rights activist and former child slave Simon Deng.
“Nothing is being done,” said Deng, eyes welling up with tears.
“People are being bombarded by the Ugandan air force … and the world said absolutely nothing.”
“70,000 Southern Sudanese perish … 2 million are refugees and 1 million more [fled] to Northern Sudan,” continued Deng, citing United Nations figures that 4 million South Sudanese are starving to death.
The U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) office estimates as many as 5.8 million South Sudanese had “food insecurity” in September 2014 and the number was projected to grow to 6.4 million this year.
South Sudan gained its independence in 2011 but has been rocked with brutal conflict since December 2013. The warring sides have exhibited horrific violence against civilians.
“There is a Rwanda genocide taking place … in Southern Sudan now,” said Deng. “And we’re not even following it, because there’s not a single camera there on the ground to bring the footage.”
“Shame on us if [we] don’t listen and don’t pay attention,” he said.
“I’m calling on the United States President Barack Obama to be a peace broker between the [warring] Southern Sudanese, to take a lead and be the one to broker the peace between the two [warring parties] who are now slaughtering themselves,” said Deng.
“Take action now… Time has come,” he said. “Let’s take action; let’s take the leadership. Let’s stop the talk and let’s walk the walk, Mr. President. …Save my people and save myself too.”
Deng argued that South Sudan “is an American baby” because “it was an American who brought Southern Sudan and made it a country today and it was American leadership who helped the people of Southern Sudan to have their freedom and their independence. We’re coming to tell Americans the baby you brought to the world is dying.”
“I’m here as one of the 4 million the United Nations said are starving to death in Southern Sudan,” said Deng. “Because these are my people. These are my family. I have so many loved ones, relatives, who’ve been slaughtered in this madness tragedy.”
“If I happen to be one of them, and then I’m dying in front of the White House, let it go down in history that America ignores the call,” he said.
“As a free man, to use my freedom right to call my president to take action, and take the lead.”
Simon Aban Deng is a human rights activist and a U.S. citizen who has spoken out about the treatment of Christians at the hands of Arabs in Sudan, saying that the West has abandoned the “victims of Arab/Islamic apartheid.”
Born in the Sudan, at the age of 9 he was captured by an Arab neighbor and sold to a family in the north as a “gift.”
“For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations, working around the clock, sleeping on the ground with animals, eating the family’s left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word ‘no.’ All I could say was ‘yes,’ ‘yes,’ yes,'” Deng has recounted of his slavery.
Deng told the Washington Examiner his time as a slave taught him what it was like to not be able to speak up for oneself. “The Southern Sudanese, the people who I’m speaking on their behalf today … they have no voice. I happen to be their voice because I’m free.”
“That’s why I’m here: as a free person speaking on behalf of those who cannot free themselves and those who cannot speak for themselves,” said Deng.
