9-18-06, 9:16 am
Political opponents of the Khartoum regime have come under increased surveillance, harassment and arbitrary arrest by NIF security forces, states a number of recent reports by the Sudan Organization Against Torture (SOAT).
In a series of statements released earlier this month, SOAT, in conjunction with other Sudanese-based human rights organizations, documented a number of cases of internal repression of critics of the ruling regime, including political activists, trade unionists, human rights workers, and journalists.
Between August 30 and September 1, according to SOAT, Sudanese government security forces arrested individuals involved in a Khartoum demonstration organized by political opposition groups to protest rising oil and sugar prices. After a peaceful rally in Green Tomb Square, protesters intended to deliver a petition with their complaints to the Sudanese governments.
According to SOAT's sources, the police attacked the demonstrators with batons and tear gas, during which one elderly man died due to asphyxiation. Dozens of protesters and passersby were arrested.
According to SOAT, none of the people arrested were informed immediately of charges against them nor had they been granted access to legal advice, in violation of both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Fair Trial and Legal Assistance in Africa.
As a result of the protests, the Sudanese government launched an apparent crackdown on opposition groups, during which several more activists and leaders were arrested. According to SOAT, four members of the Sudanese Communist Party were arrested in the ensuing raids.
According to reports, prior to their arrest, these four individuals were publicly announcing plans for a second demonstration to take place on September 2 in Kosti City, four hours by car south of Khartoum. Though the Communist Party organizers had been given permission both to hold the demonstration and to announce it publicly, Sudanese security forces arbitrarily withdrew the permission and jailed the activists.
These demonstrations in Khartoum and Kosti were organized by a coalition of groups which included the Communist Party, the Umma Party, the Democratic Unionist Party, the New Democratic Forces Party (HAQ), the Arab Nassrist Party and a number of trade unions, according to SOAT. Demonstrators who have been arrested (some of whom have been released) include members of these parties as well as the Sudanese National Congress Party and the Ba'athist Arab Party.
Some of those arrested were charged with and found guilty of 'rioting' and 'disturbing the public peace.' In addition to political activists, trade unionists, and journalists, human rights workers, one of whom is associated with SOAT and the Khartoum Center for Human Rights and Environmental Development, were also arrested and charged. Punishments included large fines and prison sentences.
About one week after these events, on September 9th, human rights lawyer Mohamed Badawi who works with the Amel Center for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture, an organization that provides legal aid to victims of torture and sexual violence and represents individuals at risk of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, was summoned for interrogation to Sudanese government security offices. Badawi was reportedly interrogated about his ties to the Communist Party.
Over the course of the past few months, Amel Center workers have been systematically harassed by government police. The Amel Center has been accused of crimes against the state. Its director, Dr. Nagib Nagm Eldin, has been arrested in the past under suspicion of releasing information viewed as critical of the Khartoum regime to international human rights organizations. The medical director of the Amel Center, Dr. Mohamed Ahmed Abdullah, was arrested last June for participating in political meetings that discussed the implication of the Darfur Peace Agreement. The Amel Center's coordinator and leading attorney, Mossaad Mohamed Ali, has been arrested several times for criticizing the government under trumped up charges of 'undermining the constitutional order.'
In its statement about these incidents, SOAT condemned 'the pattern of harassment and intimidation of human rights defenders working in Darfur and throughout Sudan' and described the government's repressive activities as 'clearly intended to intimidate human rights defenders and to prevent them from carrying out their work.'
In a separate incident, Khartoum journalist Mohamed Taha was found dead, apparently murdered and decapitated in a remote area south of the city. Taha wrote for an Islamic publication called Al-Wifaq Journal, and, according to sources informing the Sudanese Human Rights Organization based in Cairo, Egypt, was likely killed by security forces for critical articles he published against the Khartoum regime.
Taha's articles had criticized the Sudanese government for its repression of the political opposition, its failure to cooperate with the international community to resolve the ongoing Darfur crisis, and the failure to implement fully the Naivasha Peace Accords, which were supposed to have resolved the violence in Darfur.
In an interview published in the People's Weekly World last June, Fathi M. El Fadl, an international representative of the Sudanese Communist Party, described the NIF regime in Khartoum as a darling of IMF and World Bank neo-liberal policymakers and stated pointedly: '[F]or us it is important to unmask the position of the Sudanese government, to demand that it cooperate with efforts to hold accountable those responsible for violation of human rights in Darfur, including through the International Criminal Court [ICC].'
El Fadl accused the Sudanese government of its large role in the atrocities, including war crimes and ethnic cleansing, in Darfur that have killed approximately 400,000 people and displaced well over a million between 2003 and the present. He called for a well-armed African Union-led peacekeeping force (in conjunction with a non-NATO UN force) to protect the civilian population and cooperate with the ICC. He added that a political resolution requires the unity and cooperation of all democratic and national forces to seek peaceful resolutions.
El Fadl also accused the Sudanese government of fostering anti-UN sentiments by misleadingly characterizing a potential UN force as equal to the US-led occupation for in Iraq. The Khartoum regime has already in fact accepted a UN contingent of 6,000 troops other purposes. Further, Khartoum's economic and intelligence alliance with the US has won it the approval of the Bush administration as an ally in the war on terror, despite former Secretary of State Colin Powell's claim in September 2004 that the atrocities in Darfur amounted to genocide.
While concerns about US-led interference in any country are legitimate – as the US-occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere have shown – the Sudanese government's refusal to accept international peacekeepers should not be regarded as anti-imperialist. It is a veiled effort to block international accountability for its crimes in Darfur and the waves of repression it carries out to advance its domestic agenda and repress its political opponents (a pattern that some will recognize as uncannily similar, though on a much larger scale, to the Bush administration’s own domestic tactics in its 'war on terror').
--Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at
