William Deng: From Slavery to Freedom Fighter
Kidnapped and sold into slavery at the age of 7 during a violent raid on his village, Virginia Commonwealth University graduate William Deng is raising warning flags over the latest rebellions spreading from Egypt to Libya and beyond in what he calls the Islamitization of Africa and its plans for control of America.
By Andrea McDaniel
Just as Virginia was crucial in the 13 colonies’ successful revolt against the British Empire 230 years ago she is now as crucial in the fight against radical Islam. So says one of her adopted sons, William Deng, a 2008 Virginia Commonwealth University graduate, who confides he’s as deeply worried about America as well as his native Southern Sudan which has seen more than twenty years of brutality from the Muslim Arab North in which two million people have lost their lives, millions of others displaced to refugee camps or like Deng, were sold into slavery.
Deng warns that the North’s Khartoum government, led by Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir is engaged in a deliberate campaign with the Muslim Brotherhood and Arab League to control Sudan, Africa and eventually the rest of the world. Al-Bashir came to power in an Islamic-backed coup in 1989. The BBC also describes Al-Bashir as a controversial figure both in Sudan and worldwide. Nearly three years ago, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), accused al-Bashir of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur in which an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 Darfurians were slaughtered.
"As a Southern Sudanese Christian I went through Arab Muslim persecution as my people have for 22 years. I know whereof I speak," Deng says. "It (Sudan’s conflict) was not and never will be a 'civil war' as the Khartoum government tries to sell it,” Deng explains, "It is an occupation and deliberate campaign to wipe out the true African tribes and cultures. "Native Africans are not Arab," Deng stresses. He says African-Americans need to realize that too. They need to learn their own history so they are not deceived into becoming tools of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic militant group bent on destroying America's way of life. "They are using the team of Obama to take over the U.S.," Deng says, "this is the deal and it's coming and not too far away."
Deng and other Sudanese American groups are doing all they can to make Americans as well as native Sudanese, aware of the danger before it's too late. Their first “Marginalization Dialogues” conference was held in February at VCU and featured an impressive and diverse array of speakers, including Khalid Gerais of the Nubia Project: “We ask Congress and the President to give us a chance, give us airtime to speak to our people in our own language, not Arabic, but they don’t want to do this. US dollars go to the Khartoum government. We are taxpayers; we are asking Congress to stop funding Arab radicals who are forcing Arabization and Islamization in Africa. The US has tasted the bitterness of terrorism (on 9/11) but we (Sudanese) have tasted it for centuries. Egypt produces terrorism and the United States sends one and a half billion dollars to Cairo. All of our (Sudanese school) books are printed in Egypt.”
In January Southern Sudanese voters approved becoming an independent country by a more than 98 percent margin. Once the South voted to secede, one and a half million who had either fled to the North to escape the persecution by Khartoum’s soldiers or were abducted and relocated to the North as slaves, started coming South to get out from under Basher's oppressive rule. “The Christian South has been holding out against the Muslim persecution for 20 plus years and is poor...There is not enough food or ways to earn a living for this influx of refugees and there is real danger that if people don't understand what is going on the Muslim Brotherhood and Arab League will win,” Deng worries.
As plans proceed to split the North and South in July, Deng’s Southern Sudan Project, based in Richmond, is planning the second of two conferences aimed at bringing Sudanese group and Americans together to promote understanding. “I also wanted (to represent) the marginalized people of Sudan, which includes victims of persecution and genocide in Darfur, the Blue Nile, and the Nubian Mountains. Many in these areas were victims of the Jaluba, black Sudanese slave hunters who were Arabized and now kidnap their own people in raids and sell them to Arabs. A BBC video report noted that “Khartoum denies slavery exists but it can’t afford to pay its army so…” it turns a blind eye to the practice. The European-based Christian Solidarity International and other organizations undergo dangerous forays into Sudan to buy slaves their freedom from their wealthy Arab owners. “Government reprisals make people afraid to try and help slaves.”
"What is happening in Sudan is directly related to what is happening in America. These people have an ideology to take over the world. If America shelters Islamic organizations who claim to be peaceful, they are being deceived. Who have you seen in the Muslim community oppose their own over what they are doing?" Deng asks, pointing to the genocide and torture in Sudan and elsewhere. "They (American Muslims) are silent because they know they have a duty to destroy the Western way of life. "I do not like the direction America is taking, Deng says. "America concerns me every day, more than anything else. It is a shelter for people like me and if we lose her, where can we go?" he asks.
Deng, Gerais and other groups are hoping the “Marginalization Dialogues” will help connect the dots. Deng says Americans should learn lessons from what’s happened and is happening now in Sudan: "Everything, the lakes, the cities, everything in Sudan has been renamed with Arabic names. They twist our history and deny our ancestors." Deng says he and other Sudanese children were and are still forced to learn and speak only Arabic in school. Sudan was divided into five districts and residents were prohibited from leaving their own districts to visit others so it was impossible to get an idea of what was going on. “Language is so important,” Gervais notes, “without it you cannot transmit your culture to a new generation. The Arab Muslims have been successful with many young Africans who are now confused about who they are.
Deng knows whereof he speaks: "I was taken away to slavery by Arab Muslims right from my village. I have more knowledge because I was a slave under Muslim rule--I lived it," Deng said. "America's young, especially young African Americans need to wake up and realize they are being deceived. Our fight is not about race," Deng says emphatically, "You can see what happened on 9/11, both blacks and whites died together. If we don't come together it is eventually going to kill all of us." Deng says the Muslim Brotherhood and the Arab League are working to "divide and conquer America just as they have successfully done with native Africans in Sudan and elsewhere.
Deng's nightmare journey began at the age of 7 when he was kidnapped and taken into slavery during an attack on his peaceful Christian village in Southern Sudan. Deng remembers the quiet morning sunrise was shattered when three thousand government Arab Muslim soldiers invaded Ajak Wol, his farming village in the Southern Sudanese state of Aweil, on the border between the Muslim North and the Christian South. "We suffered many attacks," Deng remembers. That day, at 6 a.m. soldiers riding horses and camels, descended on the thousand residents living in this rural area, shooting men and women and abducting hundreds of children. It was the last time Deng saw his father. His mother, paralyzed by a vicious beating, died two years later. He knows the whereabouts of only a handful of siblings, most disappeared and have never been found.
Deng spent two years as a slave in Northern Sudan. "I didn't make trouble," Deng said, which won him the job of taking the owner's cows out to graze and water in the fields. One day he saw a distant train approaching and when it came closer, he scrambled aboard and hid all the way to Sudan's capital of Khartoum. There Deng came upon two young men from his own Dinka tribe who got him to a refugee camp and eventually Catholic Charities brought him to Richmond, Virginia. Deng graduated in 2008 from VCU. Deng’s intended major at VCU was political science "but after 9/11 I switched to Homeland Security," Deng explains. "Having been forced to attend only Arabic-speaking schools in Sudan I am fluent in Arabic and I knew my new country would need that skill for what was to come."
One would never guess Deng’s tragic childhood from his gentle, dignified manner, ready smile and talk of “forgiveness, understanding and unity between oppressed Sudanese whether Christian or Arabic. He feels a particular empathy for the people of Darfur, Nubia Mountains and River Nile region whom he describes as marginalized people who feel left behind and alone. Deng and many Sudanese believe education is the only way to turn around Sudan.
Sudanese are big proponents of education. Many of the Lost Boys of Sudan were allowed to come to the West to be educated with the goal of returning home to help rebuild Southern Sudan’s infrastructure which is in tatters from war. Deng and VCU Professor Barbara Russell created the Total Access Preparatory Academy Inc. (TAPA) a literacy program that began with 9 refugees in January 2009 initially aimed at Sudanese refugees but has since expanded to provide educational programs for refugees from 12 countries so far. With the help of a VCU Community Engagement Grant, Deng and Russell are creating a teacher training program and textbook series which is scheduled to begin this summer. Their plan is to expand TAPA to Sudan. “TAPA is going to change Sudan,” Deng predicts.
Deng’s early Arabic-only education gave him fluency in Arabic which allows him to keep abreast of the undercurrents in the Arabic-speaking world. He points to a recent interview with an American Muslim cleric by a Middle Eastern journalist. "He said in Arabic that their intent here is to make America the second largest Islamic State next to Saudi Arabia," Deng reported. "They have targeted black neighborhoods and blacks in American prisons to recruit Muslim followers." They are set on expanding the Arab League throughout Africa and use it as a base to conquer the West. "They are very frustrated with Southern Sudan because Christians have held out there for long years," Deng explains. He says their best hope to defeat Sudan's President Basher's successful divide and conquer strategy is making his African brothers and sisters aware of the truth.
Sudan means "land of black people," Deng explains, “It has never been Arab." He says Sudan has been persecuted by Arabs since Muhammad founded the Muslim faith in 682 AD. “They divided Sudan and marginalized tribes and regions. Soldiers of Khartoum’s President Basher “killed our (tribal) elders and crushed the opposition by forcing them into hiding. “The Khartoum government invested in our ignorance. “Divide and conquer is how they do it,” Deng explains. “They were able to hide the crimes in Southern Sudan and the Nubian Mountains but when they did it in Darfur survivors were able to get photographs of helicopters dropping bombs on villages.” They have taken over Libya, Morocco, Indonesia, Algeria and Somalia. “If you look at an African map you will see that the Northern and Eastern edges are no longer considered Black Africa—they are considered the Middle East.” Deng believes the militant Muslim Brotherhood and Arab League have ulterior motives and are the driving force behind the unrest in the Middle East right now. "It will not help my people," Deng says.
Sudan is the largest country in Africa. Southern Sudan is rich in oil, cotton and fertile land. Eighty percent of the oil sold from Sudan comes from the South. Deng argues the Arab League and Muslim Brotherhood need land--they don't need people but oil, water and land and are working together to take Sudan first and from there all of Africa. Arab oil money gives them an "incredible amount of money" to implement this strategy.
Once the South voted to secede, one and a half million who had either fled to the North to escape the persecution by Khartoum's soldiers or were abducted and relocated to the North as slaves, started coming South to get out from under Basher's oppressive rule. The Christian South has been holding out against the Muslim persecution for 20 plus years and is poor...There is not enough food or ways to earn a living for this influx of refugees and there is real danger that if people don't understand what is going on the Muslim Brotherhood and Arab League will win and how Sudan goes so goes Africa and eventually, so goes the world.
Deng believes it was no coincidence he was sent to Virginia. Virginia's minds were behind the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, Deng says proudly. One of his favorite quotes listed on his Facebook page was delivered at Richmond’s St. John’s Church by Virginia’s fiery orator Patrick Henry: “Give me liberty or give me death.” Deng’s childhood nearly perfectly echoes the words that Henry used in 1775 in persuading his fellow Virginians to fight for freedom: “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided,” Henry thundered, “and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future, but by the past.” Henry led up to his most famous declaration by asking, “Is life so dear, peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!” William Deng stands in Virginia’s capitol city 236 years later nearly to the day, reliving his stolen childhood, the murder of his parents and family, remembering his chains of slavery, starvation and terror, in making a willing sacrifice now of his young adulthood to anyone who will listen and join the fight to help save his people and his beloved Sudan.
###
The second “Sudanese Conference of Marginalization Dialogs” will be held Saturday, June 4, 2011 in the ballrooms above the Student Commons on the VCU Monroe campus. For more information: www.southernsudanproject.org.
By Andrea McDaniel
Just as Virginia was crucial in the 13 colonies’ successful revolt against the British Empire 230 years ago she is now as crucial in the fight against radical Islam. So says one of her adopted sons, William Deng, a 2008 Virginia Commonwealth University graduate, who confides he’s as deeply worried about America as well as his native Southern Sudan which has seen more than twenty years of brutality from the Muslim Arab North in which two million people have lost their lives, millions of others displaced to refugee camps or like Deng, were sold into slavery.
Deng warns that the North’s Khartoum government, led by Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir is engaged in a deliberate campaign with the Muslim Brotherhood and Arab League to control Sudan, Africa and eventually the rest of the world. Al-Bashir came to power in an Islamic-backed coup in 1989. The BBC also describes Al-Bashir as a controversial figure both in Sudan and worldwide. Nearly three years ago, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), accused al-Bashir of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur in which an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 Darfurians were slaughtered.
"As a Southern Sudanese Christian I went through Arab Muslim persecution as my people have for 22 years. I know whereof I speak," Deng says. "It (Sudan’s conflict) was not and never will be a 'civil war' as the Khartoum government tries to sell it,” Deng explains, "It is an occupation and deliberate campaign to wipe out the true African tribes and cultures. "Native Africans are not Arab," Deng stresses. He says African-Americans need to realize that too. They need to learn their own history so they are not deceived into becoming tools of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic militant group bent on destroying America's way of life. "They are using the team of Obama to take over the U.S.," Deng says, "this is the deal and it's coming and not too far away."
Deng and other Sudanese American groups are doing all they can to make Americans as well as native Sudanese, aware of the danger before it's too late. Their first “Marginalization Dialogues” conference was held in February at VCU and featured an impressive and diverse array of speakers, including Khalid Gerais of the Nubia Project: “We ask Congress and the President to give us a chance, give us airtime to speak to our people in our own language, not Arabic, but they don’t want to do this. US dollars go to the Khartoum government. We are taxpayers; we are asking Congress to stop funding Arab radicals who are forcing Arabization and Islamization in Africa. The US has tasted the bitterness of terrorism (on 9/11) but we (Sudanese) have tasted it for centuries. Egypt produces terrorism and the United States sends one and a half billion dollars to Cairo. All of our (Sudanese school) books are printed in Egypt.”
In January Southern Sudanese voters approved becoming an independent country by a more than 98 percent margin. Once the South voted to secede, one and a half million who had either fled to the North to escape the persecution by Khartoum’s soldiers or were abducted and relocated to the North as slaves, started coming South to get out from under Basher's oppressive rule. “The Christian South has been holding out against the Muslim persecution for 20 plus years and is poor...There is not enough food or ways to earn a living for this influx of refugees and there is real danger that if people don't understand what is going on the Muslim Brotherhood and Arab League will win,” Deng worries.
As plans proceed to split the North and South in July, Deng’s Southern Sudan Project, based in Richmond, is planning the second of two conferences aimed at bringing Sudanese group and Americans together to promote understanding. “I also wanted (to represent) the marginalized people of Sudan, which includes victims of persecution and genocide in Darfur, the Blue Nile, and the Nubian Mountains. Many in these areas were victims of the Jaluba, black Sudanese slave hunters who were Arabized and now kidnap their own people in raids and sell them to Arabs. A BBC video report noted that “Khartoum denies slavery exists but it can’t afford to pay its army so…” it turns a blind eye to the practice. The European-based Christian Solidarity International and other organizations undergo dangerous forays into Sudan to buy slaves their freedom from their wealthy Arab owners. “Government reprisals make people afraid to try and help slaves.”
"What is happening in Sudan is directly related to what is happening in America. These people have an ideology to take over the world. If America shelters Islamic organizations who claim to be peaceful, they are being deceived. Who have you seen in the Muslim community oppose their own over what they are doing?" Deng asks, pointing to the genocide and torture in Sudan and elsewhere. "They (American Muslims) are silent because they know they have a duty to destroy the Western way of life. "I do not like the direction America is taking, Deng says. "America concerns me every day, more than anything else. It is a shelter for people like me and if we lose her, where can we go?" he asks.
Deng, Gerais and other groups are hoping the “Marginalization Dialogues” will help connect the dots. Deng says Americans should learn lessons from what’s happened and is happening now in Sudan: "Everything, the lakes, the cities, everything in Sudan has been renamed with Arabic names. They twist our history and deny our ancestors." Deng says he and other Sudanese children were and are still forced to learn and speak only Arabic in school. Sudan was divided into five districts and residents were prohibited from leaving their own districts to visit others so it was impossible to get an idea of what was going on. “Language is so important,” Gervais notes, “without it you cannot transmit your culture to a new generation. The Arab Muslims have been successful with many young Africans who are now confused about who they are.
Deng knows whereof he speaks: "I was taken away to slavery by Arab Muslims right from my village. I have more knowledge because I was a slave under Muslim rule--I lived it," Deng said. "America's young, especially young African Americans need to wake up and realize they are being deceived. Our fight is not about race," Deng says emphatically, "You can see what happened on 9/11, both blacks and whites died together. If we don't come together it is eventually going to kill all of us." Deng says the Muslim Brotherhood and the Arab League are working to "divide and conquer America just as they have successfully done with native Africans in Sudan and elsewhere.
Deng's nightmare journey began at the age of 7 when he was kidnapped and taken into slavery during an attack on his peaceful Christian village in Southern Sudan. Deng remembers the quiet morning sunrise was shattered when three thousand government Arab Muslim soldiers invaded Ajak Wol, his farming village in the Southern Sudanese state of Aweil, on the border between the Muslim North and the Christian South. "We suffered many attacks," Deng remembers. That day, at 6 a.m. soldiers riding horses and camels, descended on the thousand residents living in this rural area, shooting men and women and abducting hundreds of children. It was the last time Deng saw his father. His mother, paralyzed by a vicious beating, died two years later. He knows the whereabouts of only a handful of siblings, most disappeared and have never been found.
Deng spent two years as a slave in Northern Sudan. "I didn't make trouble," Deng said, which won him the job of taking the owner's cows out to graze and water in the fields. One day he saw a distant train approaching and when it came closer, he scrambled aboard and hid all the way to Sudan's capital of Khartoum. There Deng came upon two young men from his own Dinka tribe who got him to a refugee camp and eventually Catholic Charities brought him to Richmond, Virginia. Deng graduated in 2008 from VCU. Deng’s intended major at VCU was political science "but after 9/11 I switched to Homeland Security," Deng explains. "Having been forced to attend only Arabic-speaking schools in Sudan I am fluent in Arabic and I knew my new country would need that skill for what was to come."
One would never guess Deng’s tragic childhood from his gentle, dignified manner, ready smile and talk of “forgiveness, understanding and unity between oppressed Sudanese whether Christian or Arabic. He feels a particular empathy for the people of Darfur, Nubia Mountains and River Nile region whom he describes as marginalized people who feel left behind and alone. Deng and many Sudanese believe education is the only way to turn around Sudan.
Sudanese are big proponents of education. Many of the Lost Boys of Sudan were allowed to come to the West to be educated with the goal of returning home to help rebuild Southern Sudan’s infrastructure which is in tatters from war. Deng and VCU Professor Barbara Russell created the Total Access Preparatory Academy Inc. (TAPA) a literacy program that began with 9 refugees in January 2009 initially aimed at Sudanese refugees but has since expanded to provide educational programs for refugees from 12 countries so far. With the help of a VCU Community Engagement Grant, Deng and Russell are creating a teacher training program and textbook series which is scheduled to begin this summer. Their plan is to expand TAPA to Sudan. “TAPA is going to change Sudan,” Deng predicts.
Deng’s early Arabic-only education gave him fluency in Arabic which allows him to keep abreast of the undercurrents in the Arabic-speaking world. He points to a recent interview with an American Muslim cleric by a Middle Eastern journalist. "He said in Arabic that their intent here is to make America the second largest Islamic State next to Saudi Arabia," Deng reported. "They have targeted black neighborhoods and blacks in American prisons to recruit Muslim followers." They are set on expanding the Arab League throughout Africa and use it as a base to conquer the West. "They are very frustrated with Southern Sudan because Christians have held out there for long years," Deng explains. He says their best hope to defeat Sudan's President Basher's successful divide and conquer strategy is making his African brothers and sisters aware of the truth.
Sudan means "land of black people," Deng explains, “It has never been Arab." He says Sudan has been persecuted by Arabs since Muhammad founded the Muslim faith in 682 AD. “They divided Sudan and marginalized tribes and regions. Soldiers of Khartoum’s President Basher “killed our (tribal) elders and crushed the opposition by forcing them into hiding. “The Khartoum government invested in our ignorance. “Divide and conquer is how they do it,” Deng explains. “They were able to hide the crimes in Southern Sudan and the Nubian Mountains but when they did it in Darfur survivors were able to get photographs of helicopters dropping bombs on villages.” They have taken over Libya, Morocco, Indonesia, Algeria and Somalia. “If you look at an African map you will see that the Northern and Eastern edges are no longer considered Black Africa—they are considered the Middle East.” Deng believes the militant Muslim Brotherhood and Arab League have ulterior motives and are the driving force behind the unrest in the Middle East right now. "It will not help my people," Deng says.
Sudan is the largest country in Africa. Southern Sudan is rich in oil, cotton and fertile land. Eighty percent of the oil sold from Sudan comes from the South. Deng argues the Arab League and Muslim Brotherhood need land--they don't need people but oil, water and land and are working together to take Sudan first and from there all of Africa. Arab oil money gives them an "incredible amount of money" to implement this strategy.
Once the South voted to secede, one and a half million who had either fled to the North to escape the persecution by Khartoum's soldiers or were abducted and relocated to the North as slaves, started coming South to get out from under Basher's oppressive rule. The Christian South has been holding out against the Muslim persecution for 20 plus years and is poor...There is not enough food or ways to earn a living for this influx of refugees and there is real danger that if people don't understand what is going on the Muslim Brotherhood and Arab League will win and how Sudan goes so goes Africa and eventually, so goes the world.
Deng believes it was no coincidence he was sent to Virginia. Virginia's minds were behind the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, Deng says proudly. One of his favorite quotes listed on his Facebook page was delivered at Richmond’s St. John’s Church by Virginia’s fiery orator Patrick Henry: “Give me liberty or give me death.” Deng’s childhood nearly perfectly echoes the words that Henry used in 1775 in persuading his fellow Virginians to fight for freedom: “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided,” Henry thundered, “and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future, but by the past.” Henry led up to his most famous declaration by asking, “Is life so dear, peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!” William Deng stands in Virginia’s capitol city 236 years later nearly to the day, reliving his stolen childhood, the murder of his parents and family, remembering his chains of slavery, starvation and terror, in making a willing sacrifice now of his young adulthood to anyone who will listen and join the fight to help save his people and his beloved Sudan.
###
The second “Sudanese Conference of Marginalization Dialogs” will be held Saturday, June 4, 2011 in the ballrooms above the Student Commons on the VCU Monroe campus. For more information: www.southernsudanproject.org.
