Shock in Sudan over remarks attributed to Bashir on rape of women in Darfur

March 30, 2010 (KHARTOUM) — The Sudanese government maintained silence on a disclosure made by Islamist opposition leader Hassan Al-Turabi relating to a remark made by president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir before a national commission of inquiry established in 2004 to investigate alleged right abuses in Darfur.

A video posted to the You Tube website showed Turabi addressing audience in Al-Hajj Yusuf area east of Khartoum at an unspecified date this month talking about Bashir’s indictment last year by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur.

Last month, ICC appeals chamber ordered the pre-trial judges to reconsider genocide charges against Bashir.

“The UN Security Council for which you are a member said this [Darfur] case should be referred [to ICC] and you were cooperating [with ICC] and you were happy saying yes take it to the court, I am sure the court won’t find anything….Once it reached [Bashir] him, Ocampo [ICC prosecutor] was received here, [they] honored him; three years his [Ocampo] teams were working [inside Sudan],” Al-Turabi said

“Even the Sudanese commission did the same thing. One senior [member] from the commission, without naming him, said after we were sworn in [before Bashir] we sat down with the person that we took the oath before him, you know who is,” he added.

“He [Bashir] told us, [if] this Gharbawia [Darfuri woman], when a Ja’ali [man from the Ja’al tribe] man humps her, is this an honor or rape?”

The commission member according to the Turabi told him that “his hair stood on end” when heard Bashir’s comment and was speechless.

“I swear to you in the name of god this story was told to me [by someone] I know very well” the Popular Congress Party (PCP) leader said.

The Sudanese president in May 2004 issued a decree establishing the National Commission of Inquiry in Darfur chaired by Dafa Allah Elhadj Yousuf who is a longtime and close friend of Turabi. It was mandated with collecting information on alleged violations of human rights in the restive region.

The panel found that “serious violations” were committed by all parties to the conflict and recommended prosecutions by the state against the perpetrators but so far little has emerged about domestic trials for the suspects.

The video of Turabi was widely circulated amid shock and disbelief on a racially sensitive topic.

Mohamed Taha Mohamed Ahmed, editor of al-Wifaq newspaper, was kidnapped from his home in 2006. His decapitated body was found in the streets of Khartoum a day later.

The authorities said that the nine convicts who carried out the gruesome crime had been infuriated by an article in Taha’s paper, which used unflattering language to describe Darfuri women and their claims on being raped.

All men were sentenced to death by hanging.

One political observer in Khartoum who asked not to be named told Sudan tribune that Bashir’s “pride in his Ja’ali heritage may have prompted this unwise remark before the commission”.

“President Bashir says many things publicly that do not suit a leader of a country so he may be even more daring privately but Turabi also has motives to lie. Either way if the [Sudanese presidency] does not step in to deny this thing could grow like a snowball out of control” he said.

In 2008 seven people were killed and 107 were wounded in clashes between members of the Hausa tribe and Sudanese authorities in different parts of the country after a newspaper attributed a statement to Bashir in which he described them as “foreigners with no presence in the country” in light of their Nigerian origins.

Bashir rushed to meet with Hausa leaders and swore to them that what was published in the interview was not true. At the time ruling party officials accused Turabi’s party of standing behind the riots.

Sudan Tribune received a last minute cancellation of an interview that was arranged with Turabi on Tuesday.

Turabi was Bashir’s close political and religious ally since the 1989 coup until they split in a bitter power struggle in 1999-2000. Since then he has been in and out of jail but was released along with all other political prisoners after a north-south peace deal in 2005.

He was the one of few political leaders in the country to publicly call on Bashir to surrender himself to the ICC. The Sudanese president is accused by ICC prosecutors masterminding a campaign to wipe out the Fur, Masaalit and Zaghawa African ethnic groups in Darfur.

Sudan does not recognize the court and calls it a Western plot to isolate and fragment the country. Despite numerous reports on rape being used as a weapon of war, Sudan says it runs contrary to culture of Sudanese.

Last November, a UN report said sexual violence was “rampant” in Darfur. The report said researchers documented more than 50 cases of sexual and gender based violence, sometimes by uniformed men, on a visit to Darfur from July to August 2009, adding women in one camp reported up to 35 cases a week when they were out farming.

Abdel-Wahid Al-Nur leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) said that Bashir’s remarks “demonstrates the Islamist ideology of the regime”.

“This is a mentality that views us in Darfur as slaves and think they are entitled to rape our women as punishment as part of the genocide campaign” Al-Nur said.

“This is worst than apartheid because at least in South Africa it was a policy and public law where in Sudan it is hidden” he added.

Today Sudan official news agency (SUNA) quoted as Bashir pledging to form a “separate ministry of culture to renounce sectarianism, racism and partisanship to create a solid foundation for national unity”.

(ST)