"At least 600 children, who were captured by Arab militia and taken into slavery, were late last month released with help from UN Children's Fund (UNICEF)," SPLA spokesman George Garang told AFP by telephone.
"The children were captured during government-sponsored jihad slave raids against black African and non-Muslim communities in Bahr El Ghazal region of the south several years ago," he added.
The SPLA, which is in peace talks with the Khartoum government after two decades of fighting, believes that up to 40,000 children are still held as slaves in government-controlled territories, said Garang.
Since 1983, SPLA has been fighting to end domination by successive governments in Khartoum in a war that has claimed 1.5 million people and displaced more than four million others.
Christian Solidarity International (CSI), a Zurich-based Protestant non-governmental organisation, confirmed only the liberation of 56 boy slaves.
"Interviews with the boys revealed a clear pattern of physical and psychological abuse. They reported cases of beatings, stabbings, boy rape, racial insults, death threats and forcible conversion into Islam," according to a CSI statement released in Nairobi.
One 12-year-old former slave, named only as Piol told CSI: "My master (Ibrahim Mohammed) told me not to ask about my mother and father and ordered me to call him 'father'. Whenever I displeased him he beat me.
"Ibrahim made me go to Koranic schools. The teacher, Mohammed Razik, said that we should forget about the religion of our people and become Muslims. Otherwise, we would be infidels." The CSI statement said the group regretted that the issue of slavery had not been placed on the agenda of peace talks between Khartoum and SPLA which are ongoing in Kenya.
The United States has repeated on several occasions that that ending slavery is a precondition for a just and lasting peace in Africa's largest nation - Sapa-AFP
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