Mick Hartley

Cardinal Keith O’Brien, leader of Edinburg’s Catholics, on his recent visit to Darfur:

“The men had their ears cut off – cut right into the skull. One said he had been stripped and beaten. Another had also had his lips cut off, you could see the scars. He told me stories of other people who had had their lips padlocked. Man’s inhumanity to man is quite startling.” […]

While the outspoken Cardinal says his visit was “humanitarian, not political”, he has returned with a new rallying call for those in positions of power in Scotland, at Westminster and around the world.

“Bad enough, surely, to be hungry and thirsty, to be denied education and proper medical facilities, to have been raped, tortured and sent home as a ‘postcard’ to one’s own tribe from the perpetrators,” he says. “But to be utterly and completely ignored by the rest of the world – surely we can do more for these, our forgotten sisters and brothers?” […]

But the Cardinal believes there is hope, with projects run by Sciaf [Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund] and other charities providing crucial help to people whose lives remain devastated by the war.

He says: “I saw women getting their hair done and their feet painted by hairdressers who are also trained psychologists.

“It is only when they get a woman’s confidence when they are washing her hair that they can get her to communicate and reveal something of what has happened to her. These women have suffered multiple rapes, but under Sudanese law marital infidelity is a crime. Women also need four witnesses in any allegation of rape, and eight if the witnesses are women too.”