Jeffrey Gettleman: The War Against the Nuba

The Nuba people were celebrated by Leni Riefenstahl in a book of photographs, The Last of the Nuba (1973). Riefenstahl, the famous German filmmaker and confidante of Hitler, was drawn to the Nuba because of the vivid quality of their traditions, including public wrestling, which lasted well into the 1970s and continue to some degree to this day. Their territory, the Nuba Mountains—really hills about three thousand feet high—lies just across the border from South Sudan. For centuries the Nuba retreated into these hills to escape slave raiders. The Nuba are not Arab, like the rulers in Khartoum, and many are not Muslim; they have long seen themselves as closer to the ethnic groups, many with animist beliefs, of what is now South Sudan. They are officially Sudanese citizens, but they are seen by the Sudanese government in Khartoum as subversive enemies and they have been mercilessly bombed and starved.

Mein Blog befasst sich in einem umfassenden Sinn mit dem Verhältnis von Wissen, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft. Ein besonderes Augenmerk richte ich dabei auf die Aktivitäten des Medien- und Dienstleistungskonzern Bertelsmann und der Bertelsmann Stiftung.