Sudanese SPLM calls for international probe into Garang’s death
By TANALEE SMITH
KHARTOUM, Sudan, Aug 3, 2005 (AP) — The leadership of John Garang’s political movement has called for an international investigation into the weekend helicopter crash in southern Sudan that killed their leader and 13 others, sparking two days of deadly clashes in the capital.
Pagan Amum, a leading member of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, said the group hoped the United Nations, Uganda, Kenya, the United States and Britain would take part in the probe, according to comments published in Wednesday’s Sudan Vision newspapers.
The SPLM and the government have said they believe the crash was an accident due to poor weather. It was not clear whether the request for a probe was a change in that stance.
Amum also urged Sudanese to refrain from violence.
“We once again appeal to the people to avoid anything that would mar the climate of peace, albeit the great loss and suffering they feel,” Amum told the English daily.
At least 49 people were killed in Khartoum in two days of violence, according to a U.N. official, though the number was not officially confirmed.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan also urged calm, saying of the helicopter crash that “all indications as of now seem to indicate it was an accident.”
The government and SPLM have sought to reassure people that the fragile peace was not threatened by the death of the charismatic Garang. Amum stressed that the implementation of January’s comprehensive peace agreement would continue as planned.
Two U.S. State Department officials were expected in Sudan Wednesday “to confer with the parties and encourage them to maintain momentum on the comprehensive peace agreement and on Darfur,” department spokesman Tom Casey said.
Clashes erupted Monday in Khartoum, when angry SPLA supporters reacted to the news of Garang’s death by smashing and burning vehicles and looting stores. Some blamed the government for Garang’s death.
On Tuesday, frightened Sudanese in some neighborhoods carried clubs and bricks for protection as the violence turned ethnic and sectarian, pitting Muslim Arabs against Khartoum residents from the mostly Christian and animist south.
Armed gangs, said to be Arabs, broke into homes of southerners in several parts of the capital on Tuesday, and Garang supporters attacked Muslim neighborhoods. Television footage showed southerners’ homes torn apart, furniture smashed and doors hanging on hinges.
A dusk-to-dawn curfew was declared for the second night in a row and armored vehicles topped by soldiers patrolled the streets of downtown. In the outlying neighborhoods where the violence was focused, the military presence was even heavier.
On Saturday, Garang’s helicopter crashed into a southern mountain range in bad weather, only three weeks after he was named first vice president and joined the government that had long been his enemy. The move was part of a peace deal that southerners and northerners together celebrated as opening a new page in the conflict-torn country.
His death ruptured the long coexistence in Khartoum between northerners and the nearly 2 million southerners who live in squatter neighborhoods in the city and in four massive camps for displaced people on its outskirts.
Clashes left 36 dead on Monday, according to the government.
On Tuesday, armed Arab gangs raided the homes of some neighborhoods heavily populated by southerners in revenge for Monday’s attacks, said William Ezekiel, managing editor of the Khartoum Monitor, which focuses largely on southern issues.
Another report said northerners attacked a school, killing six or seven people, including children.
Ezekiel later said he saw seven trucks filled with southerners, some with their hands tied, being taken to a police station.
Angry southerners from camps outside the capital entered the city and attacked and looted markets in Omdurman and killed a Muslim imam, a senior U.N. official in Khartoum said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to journalists.
Throughout the day, tribal leaders — who carry more weight with many people than government officials — appealed far calm in TV and radio messages.
Many of Khartoum’s police forces trained to deal with riot situations are currently in Darfur to help with security in that troubled western region.
Other cities, including Wad Medani in the east and Juba in the south, also reported violence. But the clashes were largely seen as a display of grief and anger over Garang’s death and not as a collapse of security.
The government and Garang’s movement were struggling to reassure Sudanese that the fragile peace agreement was not threatened by the death of the charismatic Garang.
The worst case scenario was that the power-sharing deal between north and south could collapse and lead to a return to civil war. But all sides were underlining that they were still on board the agreement.
Amum, the SPLA official, said Salva Kiir Maydarit, who has already been named Garang’s successor, would fly to Khartoum after the funeral on Saturday to be sworn in as first vice president.
President Omar al-Bashir was expected to attend the burial in the southern city of Juba. Al-Bashir and Garang had been bitter enemies but had taken to calling each other “brother” since Garang came to Khartoum to take the vice president post.
Garang’s body is lying at New Site, one of his former bases in southern Sudan, and his family received condolences Tuesday from supporters and friends.
The body will be taken to key towns in the south to allow supporters to pay their respects before heading to Juba, the planned capital of the south’s future autonomous government, created under the peace deal and new constitution.
Al-Bashir and Garang had been aiming to finish assembling a power-sharing Cabinet by Aug. 9. It was unclear whether that would be delayed.
Associated Press writer Mohamed Osman contributed to this report.