First Pictures for 7 Years inside Sudan confirm genocide and terror

Press Release 18th May 1993

The first film crew to visit the interior of the Nuba mountains in Sudan for seven years have recorded dramatic visual evidence of torture and genocide. Extracts from the film will be previewed in the Grand Committee Room, House of Commons on Tuesday 18th May at 11.3Oam.

British Members of Parliament will view a 15-minute film directed by anthropologist and film maker Hugo D'Aybaury who was smuggled into Sudan and spent three weeks recording atrocities committed by Sudanese government troops. Film maker D'Aybaury's trip was organised secretly and he remained incommunicado for the entire period. The journey was completed by foot and by camel and was undertaken at considerable peril.

The film contains dramatic and disturbing images of a people struggling to survive against a reign of terror.
*First-hand accounts of genocide and torture.
*Devastation of villages which have become virtual ghost towns.
*lnterviews with survivors of death squads.
* Church worker Kamal Tutu who witnessed his congregation being tortured and burnt and his church destroyed reveals how he was bound and thrown on the fire. He says, 'After they burnt the church with the people inside, the military threw me into the embers of the church and left... this is what I have seen with my own eyes."
* In his first interview, Yousif Kuwa, the leader of the Nuba people, appeals to the world for protection.
* Episcopal Church leaders describing persecution of Nuba priests.

The Nuba people, a Black minority who have lived peacefully for thousands of years in the middle of Sudan, are now struggling to preserve their identity. Victims of religious and racial persecution at the hands of the government's troops, they are being forced from their homelands under the pretext of collaboration with the Sudan People's Liberation Army.

Hugo D'Aybaury, of Peekaboo Pictures, is a trained anthropologist and documentary film maker based in London. "I see myself as an ethno-detective. I used to uncover complicated situations which required time, patience and precise knowledge. To start this investigation, I asked for a mandate from a native Sudanese organisation, the Sudan Human Rights Organisation."