Darfur detainees stage hunger strike

KHARTOUM, July 21 (AFP) — Around forty Sudanese political detainees from the embattled western Darfur region have launched a hunger strike in the Kober Prison in northern Khartoum, a lawyer said.

Internally displaced women are seen in Al-Sereif camp, near Nyala town in Sudan’s southern Darfur region. (AFP) .

Mohammed Abdallah Adoumah told AFP that the detainees “have been in detention for up to two years with no charges having been filed against them nor have they been taken to court.”

Adoumah said the families of the detainees told defense lawyers that their relatives Wednesday staged a hunger strike, “protesting failure by the authorities to free them after the lifting of the state of emergency.”

In line with a key north-south peace agreement the state of emergency, imposed intermittently since Sudan’s President Omar el-Beshir seized power in a coup 16 years ago, was lifted earlier this month.

Beshir said all political prisoners would be freed.

But Beshir made clear that the move did not apply to Darfur and Sudan’s eastern states where uprisings have been launched by ethnic rebels seeking increased political and economic rights.

Some 300,000 people have died and more than two million displaced in Darfur since the start of the rebellion in February 2003.

Adoumah said the defense council would submit appeals to Beshir, the justice minister and the government-controlled advisory council for human rights for the release of the detainees.