A former slave turned activist in the United States says there are terrorists in the government of Sudan who oppose him and his efforts to free slaves there, but he cannot stop his work because of what he’s seen in the eyes of the people.

"It is not easy to be there to see these people, to look into their eyes, and see they are terrified," Simon Deng told WND during an exclusive interview about his recent humanitarian mission to the Darfur region in Sudan.

"These are people who never have had something called freedom. They don’t know how to say no to anything. All they know is fear and threats, fear that they will be abused."

Someone, he said, has to be the "voice for the voiceless" and because he experienced slavery as a child, and escaped, he knows exactly how the people are suffering.

Deng recently returned from Sudan, where he and officials from Christian Solidarity International facilitated the freeing of about 250 slaves.

These were people – mostly Christian – who had been taken captive during the region’s recent civil war by northern Sudanese who are Muslim, and had continued in the servitude even after the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that was signed among the region’s various factions.

One of those, John Marieu Nyak Agout, 15, is a Christian, who said while in captivity he was called Mohammed and forced to follow Islamic rituals. "I was forced to call my master father," he said.

Deng told WND that no one on Earth is entitled to own another human being, and that is why he continues his work.

"When you come back from there, you are filled with all the images. You cannot go to sleep. You become consumed by the evidence of what’s going on, knowing that those people we left, don’t have what we do," he told WND.

Deng, who previously has carried his message of action to President Bush, the U.N. Human Rights Commission, and other world leaders, said he cannot just forgive and forget.

He told WND that he goes to the region several times a year to deliver aid, seek help from local factions and free those in bondage. And he doesn’t get much help from the Sudanese government, which sometimes denies him travel permission forcing him to travel through Kenya instead.

He said even now, the federal government there does little to resolve the problems, and most of the work is being done through local tribes who work together to restore peace and stability to the area.

One of Deng’s biggest obstacles on his trips is to convince northern Sudanese owners they must allow the slaves to go free.
When slaves are freed, he said, their difficulties are not over, because often they return to areas where their villages have been decimated, their families dead or gone.

"In reality they have to figure out how they are going to fit into that new society," he said.

Deng told WND he’s already working on his next trip, and he wants help. "As Americans, we have to act, and act now," he said.


Posted: May 16, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

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