Press Release

August 22, 2003

SUDAN GOVERNMENT:
BREAKING THE HUMAN SPIRIT AND THE NATIONAL CONSENSUS

Since it was nominally released of the important human rights monitoring of its obligation to human rights and the respect of public freedoms as was carefully warranted by the Human Rights Commission through the good effort of the United Nations Special Reporter on the Situation of Human Rights in Sudan, the Sudan Government has been exercising “full enjoyment” of the worst human rights violations, deliberately, shamelessly, and persistently.

The extra-judicial killing never ceased to take place: reliable reports from DarFur further augmented and authenticated by international sources (example E/CN.4/ Sub.2/2003/ NGO/27/ 15 July 2003) leaves no doubt about the grievous size and content of the crimes against humanity committed by the Sudan Government against the innocent citizens of DarFur in the period under investigation.

The determination of the head of state to deal with the state-made civil war in DarFur with military and security action, instead of implementing a civilized method of peace negotiations for the DarFur-Khartoum crisis within a national democratic political settlement of the Sudan’s Crisis, is a direct result of the government’s active policies of racial and ethnic discrimination as pursued since June 1989 by the military and civilian rulers in DarFur and the other regions of Sudan.

The Sudan Government has been breaking the human spirit of citizens by a systematic state-planned, dehumanizing, and torturing mode of rule that regrettably culminated in a renewed civil war in a country already torn with North-South war, the unwillingness of government to act with maturity and responsibility towards the national agenda of the just peace, democratic governance, and even development, and the elusiveness of a ruling junta that is determined not to carry out any consistent political and moral commitment to serious peace negotiations.

The killing, aggressive assault, torture, and arbitrary arrest of hundreds of the DarFur African Sudanese, side-by-side with the uninterrupted state of emergency law, the condescending and non-fulfilling promise of restoring freedom of the press without allowing civil rights and freedoms, the unrelenting persecution of the opposition and the unlawful prolongation of the unlawful detention of political opponents continue to make of the regime’s dehumanizing practices a permanent policy.

The exercise of gross human rights violations to gear and steer government business by the NIF state managers has already poisoned the regular performance of the other government officials, whether in foreign policy (as the premeditated withdrawal of the government peace negotiators indicates) or in universities where deans of colleges and other senior educators collaborated with the police state to harass the Sudan University students.

Under direct government instruction, academic freedoms are flatly repressed not only by security authority; but more so by academic administrations denying the Juba University student rights to union elections and harassing them and the other students by extra-police and security measures, etc. All these violations were committed along the uncivilized threats of the government-supported Muslim Brotherhood and the so-called Ulama who, in the name of the innocent Islam, conspired with the conniving authority to intimidate and to demand the murdering of opposition students and the other intellectuals.

The negligence of the regime to the peace loving statements and national declarations of the NDA and the Southern Constituencies and leaderships (including the peace negotiating partner, the SPLM, as well as the human rights and democracy groups, distinguished Southern politicians, women and men, church leaders, and the Sudanese student unions) to respect the yearning of the Nation to the regular democracy and the permanent peace is consonant with the regime’s systematic policy of breaking the human spirit and national consensus.

The Sudan Government has proven beyond any doubt that it is a government unable to give peace, democracy, or development to the People of Sudan: In Kassala, tens of thousands lost their homes and many lost their lives by the floods of the Gash River, an event that has been annually taking place but the Sudan Government had nothing to give for years other than begging for international aid.

A government that consistently wastes more than 50 percent of the Sudan Treasury on military and security operations, a regime that rushes to suppress citizens with bullets and tortures, that is good at nothing but arms’ sales, commissions, and security spending, will not insure food, housing, health, or education to people.

The Organization condemns in the strongest terms possible the insistence of the Sudan Government to break the human spirit, the national consensus, and the peace loving aspirations of the People of Sudan.

The Sudan Human Rights Organization Cairo Office emphasizes with great respect and admiration the Sudanese unwavering determination to put the strongest pressure on the NIF repressive regime to comply with the democratic agenda of the peace negotiations.

SHRO-Cairo reiterates the Kassala citizens’ gratitude to the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Eritrea, Egypt, the United States, and the other donors for their humanitarian assistance to Kassala – a city destroyed by the carelessness, negligence, and failure of the Sudan Government to perform the minimum measures needed to protect the city from catastrophic destruction.

• The Sudan Government is asked to resume the peace negotiations with a new spirit: one respecting the Will of People and the Sudanese national consensus.
• The government must safeguard the national interests of the country, as is required of a good government: Sudan Government must agree and act to develop the peace negotiations to an All-Sudanese National Constitutional Conference that should insure full participation of the National Democratic Alliance and the Civil Society groups together with the close participation of the IGAD Friends, the United Nations, the African Union, Egypt, Nigeria, and South Africa in accordance with the IGAD-based Machekos Protocol.
• The Sudan Government is asked to create the climate conducive to the just and permanent peace in the whole country. The government must immediately stop wasting the Sudan Treasury in arms sales and the other security waste. The government must immediately stop escalating civil war in DarFur.
• While the promise to clear the Press from security intrusions is a constructive step, in general, the condescending attitude of the regime’s president and the first vice president to keep the press within government control through the non-intellectual control of the notorious National Press Council, curtail the right of detained prisoners to unconditional freedoms, and the like, constitutes continuous violation of international human rights norms.
• The Sudan Government must stop harassing the human spirit of the Sudanese by full adherence to the spirit and the word of international human rights norms in full compliance with the Sudanese popular movement.