SHRO-Cairo
February 5, 2004
The Human Rights Commission, Geneva
Human Rights and Democracy Organizations in the International Arena
Dear Human Rights Activists,
“For the sake of Allah, we will hold the banner up, in sacrifice for religion, not for any worldly play.
So let us renew religion’s glory,
Even if blood-shedding is the only way”
That was Omer al-Bashir’s pledge for the Sudanese Armed Forces and the PDFs government-militias “to crush the rebellion of DarFur” (October 4, 2003). Blood-shedding has been, thus far, the only way for the Sudan Government to rule with the most egregious human rights violations over the People of Sudan.
As with the tradition of the Sudan Human Rights Organization Cairo Office since 1992, The Situation of Human Rights in Sudan periodical report is cordially inviting your human rights conscientiousness to sympathize with the victims of this horrid situation, and to kindly provide humanitarian support for the People of Sudan to improve their full enjoyment of human rights.
Our report reads: “The past four months’ period this report covers witnessed some improvement in the conditions of human rights in the Sudan. Still, the situation is far behind: emergency law unabated, many freedoms were curtailed; arbitrary arrest, especially in West Sudan, was activated; and 6 newspapers were temporarily or even continuously suspended. The human rights of a million citizens in DarFur region were massively violated with escalated military action by government troops and militias.”
With reference to the Sudan Government’s increasing gross human rights violations, as it has ever been since the early 1990s up to this day despite a few promising improvements, the Organization appeal to you to kindly spend more time on the sections about DarFur. Please note more detailed atrocities have been documented by the DarFurian human rights groups, the Masaleit among others, as well as Amnesty International most recent report.
What the head of state, Omer Hassan al-Bashir, commanders of the Sudanese Armed Forces (especially those acting for and running the Air Force aerial raids over the innocent women, children, and elderly population of the border towns, villages, and smaller communities of the assaulted region) have pledged via the most unprecedented abuses of authority to “crush” the anti-government reactions of the three regions of DarFur versus the injustices of Sudan Central Government is indeed a brutal renewal of the devastating civil war, which took half of a century between the Sudan Government and the South/other regions – the genocidal war that devastated the South, killing at least 2-million or more humans, and still is costly under-developing the country.
– SHRO-Cairo protests in the strongest terms possible the irresponsible attitude of the Sudan political and military leadership, which continues to brutalize the Sudanese with flagrant abuses of State powers and religious falsification.
– SHRO-Cairo appeals to all human rights activists to condemn in the strongest terms possible the Sudan Government’s crimes against humanity in the region of DarFur.
– The Organization calls upon the Human Rights Commission to deprive the Sudan Government as a worst human rights’ violator from the international seat it undeservedly retains in the human rights most distinguished world Commission.
– SHRO-Cairo calls for intensive international, regional, and local efforts to provide urgent humanitarian support to the people of DarFur. To facilitate these efforts, the Sudan Government must be forced by UN/Commission firm measures to comply with the International Humanitarian Law to which Sudan is State Party.
Although this report is short of documenting human rights violations by the Sudan Liberation Army and the other armed oppositional groups, there is no way that the DarFur rebels could be completely exempted in any sense from moral as well as material responsibility to stop by peaceful ways the ongoing war disasters that the larger disarmed innocent population of DarFur is now suffering under the most dehumanizing conditions of life.
While the negativities of the Khartoum Central Government and regional governorates are strongly responsible for appalling ethnic and administrative injustices, the DarFur armed opposition must know that war is the biggest victimizer of people and is the worst solution, if at all, for civil striving or political problems.
The Organization appreciates the willingness of the DarFur rebels to activate peace talks with the government in Chad and Switzerland. Rebels are required to enhance the cause of development and social justice in DarFur with full consideration to the equal rights of the DarFur civil society organizations and political parties to decide on the future of the region without patronage.
– SHRO-Cairo urges the Sudan Government and the DarFur rebels to immediately stop all military operations in order to strengthen the Nation’s effort to broaden the table of peace negotiations, accommodating all of the Sudanese civil or armed organized groups side-by-side with the negotiating parties at Nevasha, towards the achievement of a successful national democratic solution to the country’s renewable disasters and civil wars,
The situation of human rights in Sudan (October 31, 2003 – January 31, 2004) is rampant with gross human rights violations almost in every aspect of the civil, military, political, economic, social, and cultural life. The Organization believes that human rights are inseparable: to enforce a few improvements in the women’s right to travel, for example, is not an alternative for the government’s treaty-body obligation to ratify CEDAW.
– Sudan Government must fully comply with international human rights norms with respect to the freedom of the press and publications, the rights of the accused and political prisoners and the other criminal justice issues, as well as the other fundamental freedoms and human rights.
CC.
The IGAD – Nevasha (Kenya)
Sudan Government – Khartoum
The National Democratic Alliance (Sudan) & The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Army (SPLM/SPLA)
Attached documents
