CAIRO - Although he has been working in the Egyptian capital for more than five years now, Ibrahim Koreik still remembers vividly the scenes of suffering and dehumanisation he left behind in southern Sudan. As the Sudanese refugee from the Nubian Mountains packed up five years ago, planning to head north, Koreik knew he was leaving his family to be stalked by uncertainty and poverty in the south of Sudan. “In the south, people are so poor and discriminated against,” Koreik, 37, said. “The northerners had always felt that they are superior to everybody else,” he told The Gazette in an interview. So intense and pressing the need for self-autonomy in southern Sudan that when Koreik learned that thousands of supporters of Sudan's People's Liberation Movement (SPLAM) would gather in Cairo to voice out their desire for separation from the north of Sudan, he left his work, put on his best dress, and hurried to the Egyptian Press Syndicate where the gathering was held. There, he was one of those southern Sudanese who converged on the independent union in central Cairo to express a strong craving for the creation of an independent state in southern Sudan and mourn more than 5 million Sudanese who lost their lives during 5o years of fighting between the north and the south of the country. “Those who built the state in Sudan, built it wrongly,” said Nasr Eddin Kosheib, the resident representative of SPLAM in Cairo. “They proclaimed their state an Arab Islamic one. But they forgot that not all the residents of Sudan are Muslims and Arabs,” he added to the cheers of his audience. In front of him, hundreds of his movement's supporters kept chanting slogans calling for separation in a referendum that will be held on January 9, 2011. Seen by the southerners as their golden opportunity to build their own state away from what they call the “oppression” of the government of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, the referendum will for the first time give these southerners the chance to spell out the end of their relationship with the rest of Sudan. But many people, including Egyptians who view Sudan as their backyard, shudder in fear at the prospect of a divided Sudan. The Egyptian Government had repeatedly said that a united Sudan would serve Egypt's interests. “But unity isn't what the Sudanese of the south want,” Koreik said. “We'll still be on good terms with the north, but we've the right to have our own state,” he added. Behind him, a fellow southerner kept applauding what Kosheib said and raised a placard on which the words “A Corruption- Free Country” were written. He and others, who showed at this gathering, seemed to have a burning desire to be identified with a country other than the one where they were born and lived for years. They say they cannot still be part of a state that had for years considered them marginal. Deep under the bitterness with which they talked is a long record of fighting and bloodshed in which the government of northern Sudan has allegedly shown no mercy on their countrymen. “To be honest with you, I've always been with a united Sudan that considers its diversity and its multi-polarity,” said Hatem Hassan, a 27 year-old southern Sudanese.“But if we can't get this, let's forget about it,” he added.
