Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vienna (Fides Service) - “More than 250,000 people rely on foreign aid”, Salesian Father Jim Comino said when he paid a recent visit to the national office of the Pontifical Mission Societies in Vienna, Austria. For many years Father Jim has been in charge of a youth formation centre in Khartoum, where more than one million refugees from the war torn region of southern Sudan have lived in inhuman conditions for almost ten years.
Thanks to his local collaborators Father Jim was able to visit refugee camps while humanitarian organisations were still waiting for permission to enter the area. “The situation in the camps is unbelievably desperate ”, the Salesian said, “they make shelters with branches and sheets of plastic which will be washed away next time it rains”. They lack even the bare necessities and especially medicine and food.
Father Jim tells a sad story. “We saw a mother searching desperately for her little girl. They were hungry and she left her daughter in what she thought was a safe place to go one of the places were grain was being distributed. When she returned with the food the little girl had disappeared”.
For Father Jim the end to the humanitarian catastrophe is nowhere in sight: “The people will only return to their villages when they are certain that their lives are no longer in danger. And even when they do decide to start a new life they will need foreign aid so immense is the devastation caused by the militia western region of Sudan: more than 50.000 dead and more than one million have left their village”.
Even those who want to help the people fear the militia. And every day hundreds of displaced persons unable to find a place at the international refugee camps are helped by Catholic Sisters in the parishes of Nyala and El Fasher. Giving these people a place to sleep, medicines and food involves personal risk. “But we cannot leave them in the hands of their executioners”. In the meantime Padre Jim Comino still hopes for a speedy disarmament of the militia .
With the help of “missio Austria” medicines, oil, grain, powdered milk, soap and plastic sheeting were distributed among the needy in the region of Darfur. (MS) (Agenzia Fides, 20/09/2004 - 34 righe, 390 parole)
