Sudan committed to human rights conventions: minister
Mar 10, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan’s government stressed on Thursday its commitment to all documents and conventions of securing and defending human rights in the country including its western Darfur region.
“The governmet is exerting efforts to protect the human rights through necessary legislations and arrangements,” Minister of Justice Mohamed Ali al-Mardi said in an interview with Xinhua.
“These efforts come from our firm believes as well as national and moral motives without caring the pressures or positions (of foreign powers) based on clear objections against Sudan,” the minister added.
He criticized a recent statement made by Sima Samar, the Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights on the Situation of Human Rights in Sudan, who accused the Sudanese govenment of abusing human rights and practicing arbitrary detentions and not punishing those charged with war crimes in Darfur.
“These accusations come in the framework of continuous attacks against Sudan, and they are contradictory to the reality,” the minister said.
Al-Mardi categorically denied the existence of political detainees in Sudan’s prisons or any practice of arbitrary detentions.
Samar told a press conference in Khartoum earlier this week that the Sudanese National Intelligence Security Service and Military Intelligence was “continuously curtailing fundamental freedoms of expression and association”, underlining that she had received “credible reports that the security apparatus continue to arbitrarily arrest and detain.”
On Wednesday, Washington released Country Reports on Human Rights Practices in 2005, in which the US administration claimed that the Sudanese government’s human rights record “remained poor”, adding that “there were numerous serious problems, including evidence of continuing genocide in Darfur, for which the government and janjaweed continued to bear responsibility.”
However, the Sudanese justice minister reiterated that his government was committed to realizing peace and security in the region, saying that Khartoum was serious to try all those being convicted of committing crimes in Darfur.
“The government has promptly set up the special criminal court in order to look into the complaints of human rights abuses in Darfur, and the court is working with all seriousness, professionalism and justice,” the minister said.
Darfur was plunged into conflicts and violence in early 2003 when African tribes took up arms in the western arid area, accusing government of neglect. Since then, many people have been killed or displaced.
(Xinhua)