SPLM/A aims to shut down oilfields

The Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) said on Tuesday that it aimed to shut down all the oilfields run with government backing in southern Sudan. "We are doing all we can to stop the flow of oil to the north," George Garang, a rebel spokesman, told IRIN. "We want to make the oil companies go away." The rebels on Sunday claimed to have inflicted heavy losses on government forces guarding oilfields in southern Sudan. Some 429 government soldiers were killed in attacks between 12 and 20 October on three southern oil-producing areas: Bentiu, capital of Wahdah (Unity) State, Fariang in Upper Nile, and Fom al-Zaraf in Bahr al-Ghazal, according to a press release from the movement. The Sudanese government on Monday denied the rebel claims. "It's a big lie by the SPLA. It's a complete fabrication," the Associated Press news agency quoted Abd al-Rahman Hamzah, news director of the government spokesman's office, as saying. Hamzah said there had been a "very minor skirmish" on Friday morning (19 October) near Bentiu, but that the attack had been repulsed. Humanitarian sources told IRIN on Tuesday that although there had been reports of some shelling in Wahdah State, they had not received reports of large numbers of casualties around Bentiu town. "Our people can move into Bentiu," the sources said. "If there was heavy fighting, it must have been far away from Bentiu." The governor of Wahdah State, John Dore Majok, said there had been an attempt by the SPLA on Bentiu town, in which seven people were killed, but the attackers had been repulsed by forces loyal to Khartoum, Al-Ray al-Amm newspaper reported on Saturday. The oilfields in Wahdah State are run by the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNPOC), of which 5 percent is owned by Sudan's state Sudapec, 25 percent by Canada's Talisman Energy, 30 percent by Indonesia's state oil company, Petronas, and 40 percent by the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC). SPLM/A leader John Garang said in June that oil companies operating in Sudan were "legitimate targets" in the war against the Sudanese government, claiming that the companies drilling in the war-torn south were threatening the security of people there, and would be considered as mercenaries working for Khartoum. A report commissioned by a number of British and Canadian NGOs, and released on 16 October, claimed that the Sudanese government had used the oil infrastructure to support military action, meaning that the companies were "knowingly or unknowingly" involved in the government's counterinsurgency operations in the south. The report - by international human rights lawyer Georgette Gagnon and UK-based Africa specialist John Ryle - called for an independent human rights-monitoring body to be established to determine the effects of oil extraction on the local population. The SPLM/A would "probably support" independent human rights monitoring in the oil region, George Garang told IRIN on Tuesday. "Such a commission would show there has been massive displacement of people, and [that] the government has been committing human rights abuses, but we know the Sudanese government would never allow it," he said. Meanwhile, the SPLM/A representative to the Nordic Countries and the EU, John Andruga Duku, has claimed that some 20 people were killed on Saturday (20 October) when Sudanese government aircraft bombed civilians fleeing fighting in Western Bahr al-Ghazal. In a statement released on Sunday, Duku said that [government] Antonov aircraft had dropped some 12 bombs on a group of people moving south from the village of Mangayath towards Daym Zubayr. As many as 5,000 extra internally displaced persons (IDPs) fled fighting between government forces and the SPLA in Raga (which the has government recaptured, after losing it in May/June), bringing the number of IDPs in and around Mangayath to around 20,000, according to humanitarian sources. The WFP on 7 October expressed "grave concern" over government bomb attacks on Mangayath, which caused the UN food agency to suspend the delivery of food aid to some 20,000 target beneficiaries in the area.