Darfur rebels sign MOU with Kushite Nubian group

August 10, 2008 (WASHINGTON) – The Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) led by Abdel-Wahid Al-Nur issued a statement revealing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Kushite Nubian Rally in Washington earlier this month.

The statement signed by Al-Nur and Nuraddin Ahmed Abdul-Mannan, the head of the Kushite Nubian Rally, said both sides agreed to “work together to create Secular Democratic United Sudan based on equal citizenship rights”.

The Kushite Nubian Rally has been running a campaign to block the creation of Kajbar Dam in Northern Sudan saying it will “inundate one of the most precious and invaluable archaeological sites of the world”.

The Nubians in the region opposing the dam clashed with the police injuring several people.

Nubians who live in Egypt and Sudan have long accused both countries of marginalizing them and implementing policies “to dismantle the Nubian society and assimilate the indigenous people of Nubia into Arabic culture through well organized programs of cultural cleansing, acculturation and indoctrination”.

Both groups said that they will “stand forthwith against all attempts of destruction and dismembering the state, through policies of genocide, ethnic and cultural cleansing, displacement, and forcible relocations of the indigenous people and resettle foreigners in their lands as the case in Darfur, Nubia and other parts of Sudan”.

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked pre-trial judges in mid-July to issue arrest warrants for the Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir for 10 charges including three counts of genocide in Darfur.

(ST)