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OPPOSITION
The opposition National Democratic Alliance is an alliance of Sudan's political parties and John Garang's rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army. Based in Eritrea, it has never publicly organised in Sudan, at least, not until 10/6/96 when a representatives of the Umma, Democratic Unionist and Communist parties, trade unionists, a woman's leader living in Khartoum, along with two senior Southerners, delivered a memorandum to President Omar al-Bashir in the name of the NDA. The memo, signed by leaders of the large religious parties which dominate democratic governments in Sudan, called for the resignation of the Islamist regime's and described a record of fanaticism, cruelty, economic incompetence and corruption. The regime has "[emptied] the gracious Islam of its content due to unjust, fanatical and foolish practices", the "total economic collapse" has brought ordinary Sudanese people to "the verge of social and moral calamity", it buttresses itself with torture and murder, and plunders public funds. President al-Bashir responded to the memo in a press conference where he said the government's "Islamic agenda" would not change and that there would be no return to multi-party democracy. His security forces responded a couple of days later when they began a round up of at least 45 supporters of the banned political parties. The memo was delivered on the same day as a new austerity budget was announced [see 'If you think you've got problems' below]. New and extortionate charges for some utilities were justified by the regime as necessary to fund the war. This led to calls for a boycott, and on 9/10/96 this call was relayed by student demonstrations at two Khartoum universities. (Umma Information Office UK 10/6/96, 11/6/96; Amnesty International 28/6/96, 5/7/96; Sudan Democratic Gazette 7/96; InterPress 11/7/96)
STREET FIGHTING MEN
One of Khartoum's busiest markets was closed for over an hour last month when fighting broke out between constables from the Popular Police and soldiers. The fighting only stopped after police reinforcements used tear gas and fired shots in the air. The soldiers started the fight after the police upbraided them for the impropriety of drinking tea in the company of a woman tea seller. The Popular Police is a force set up by the regime and is separate from the regular constabulary. It is closely associated with the Islamist politicians who rule the country, and who do not like the tea-ladies. These women, often from the poorest sector of society, sell spicy tea on street corners to keep their families alive. But they are considered to be corrupters of public morals. They are fined and jailed, and often abused by the prison warders. (al-Sharq al-Awsat 19/7/96; church sources 6/96)
Hardliners from Sudan I: Binyamin Netanyahu, the new hardline Israeli prime minister told the BBC that he was born in Nuri in Sudan's Northern Province, says al-Mukhbir, a Khartoum newspaper.
Hardliners from Sudan II: Osama bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire reputed to bankroll many Islamist militant groups, is believed to have been forced out of Sudan to placate the Saudis who blame him for a recent spate of bomb attacks in the kingdom. A British journalist came across him in Afghanistan, asking about Tony Blair, while an Egyptian magazine claimed to have met him in Wembley. He said that Sudan would collapse without his money, and described politics there as "a mixture of religion and organised crime." (Independent 14/6/96; Reuter 16/6/96, 18/6/96)
FOREIGN RELATIONS
Still in the shadow of UN sanctions imposed after it failed to hand over three men suspected of trying to kill Egyptian President Husni Mubarak last year, Sudan is trying hard to make friends. Egypt, at first the most vociferous of Sudan's prosecutors at the UN has turned into its protector, inviting President al-Bashir to an Arab summit in Cairo in June. Mubarak handed Bashir a list of Egyptian militants in Sudan whom he wanted for his jails, if relations between the two countries were to improve. The Egyptians were cautiously optimistic that the Sudanese would comply, while the Sudanese were more gushingly complimentary about their new friends. One incentive for the two countries to co-operate is the prospect of two dams about to be built on Nile tributaries in Ethiopia. Egypt's water shortage is predicted to become critical in 30 years time and any attempt to interfere with the Nile waters usually panics its rulers into alliances with the only other Arab Nile country, Sudan. The UN may stiffen the sanctions on Sudan at the end of July, and Khartoum's neighbours are keeping up the pressure. Eritrea and Ethiopia continued to accuse Sudan of trying to destabilise the region, while Uganda's leader said that relations with Sudan could not get any worse "unless we go to war." Uganda is "rapidly mechanising" its army, according to Africa News Bulletin. (Africa News Bulletin 5/96; Reuter 23/6/96, 16/6/96; al-Sharq al-Awsat 22/7/96)
HUMAN RIGHTS NEWS
Amputations to start: The director general of Sudan's prisons says 100 people have been sentenced to have limbs amputated in accordance with Sudan's version of Islamic Sharia law. The sentences, postponed for several years, will be carried out in days. (Sudan News and Views 7/96)
Women's Rights: 150 women were among 200 newspaper staff laid off by government newspaper offices after they demanded equal pay and opportunities. However, a law barring Sudanese women under 50 from leaving the country without a male guardian is set to be repealed, after a workshop at Khartoum University protested at the unfairness of the legislation, intended to prevent marital infidelity. (Sudan News and Views 7/96; InterPress 16/7/96)
Boys press-ganged: Human Rights Watch Africa called on the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army to stop the forcible recruitment of minors. It gave details of 100 boys under 18 taken from Funned camp in Ethiopia, and others taken from villages in the South. Many of the Fugnido boys died in the recent SPLA attacks which won them control of much of Sudan's border with Ethiopia in March. (HRW Africa 14/6/96)
NEWS OF THE WAR AND THE SOUTH
Nuba Mountains
Five church workers visiting the Nuba mountains earlier this month were listening to the government's Radio Omdurman. The announcer praised the Nuba for living in peace and co-operation, but the church workers had to keep the volume high to drown out the noise of incoming government shells. Artillery bombardment continued through the month long visit, and on 12/7/96 a government plane bombed three villages; there were no casualties. LA in the area is led by Cmdr Youssef Kuwa Mekki, and it oversees a network of civil consultation and participation in government. However, a Nuba poet and novelist publicly broke with the SPLA at the end of June. Muhammed Haroun Kafi, Nairobi-based chairman of the Central Committee of the SPLA in the Nuba Mountains complained that the Nuba were inadequately represented on SPLA councils. He felt the Nuba were being used by the Southerners to fight their war for them - some Nuba officers were lynched last year when they refused transfers to fronts in the South. The SPLA's agreements with northern parties in the opposition National Democratic Alliance called for self determination for the South but were ambiguous on the position of the Nuba mountains, an African enclave in the Afro-Arab north. The government news agency reported that Kafi had accepted its Peace Charter, signed with the dissident rebels from the South Sudan Independence Movement in April. (Reuter 28/6/96; InterPress 2/7/96, 8/7/96; church sources 22/7/96)
Ugandan Massacre
Up to 150 Sudanese refugees were gruesomely murdered at Achol Pii, a camp in Northern Uganda, and home to 16,000 Sudanese. The Ugandan government, a UN agency and Amnesty International all accused the Lord's Resistance Army, a Christian fundamentalist movement backed by the Sudanese government of the massacre. The LRA, and its sister movement, the West Nile Bank Front were both based in South Sudan but have recently made a number of attacks in northern Uganda, now violently unstable. Observers believe that Khartoum is using these groups in retaliation for Uganda's support for the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army. The LRA wants to rule Uganda by the Ten Commandments. Its leader, Joseph Kony, wants to eliminate his own Acholi tribe, because they do not support him. (Reuter 15/7/96, 16/7/96; UNEP 19/7/96; Africanews 7/96; Amnesty International 18/7/96)
Tension in the east
Military operations by rebels associated with the opposition National Democratic Alliance continued in July. The Beja Congress, a tribal militia, claimed it had blown up two bridges on the road from Port Sudan to Khartoum on 30/6/96, killing two soldiers. The government claimed it had arrested a group of subversives three weeks later. (Reuter 2/7/96, 20/7/96)
Cluster bombs
Christian Solidarity International accuses the Sudanese armed forces of dropping cluster bombs on villages in the South. The weapons contain hundreds of mini grenades which can explode months later. Designed to kill and maim, they are outlawed by the Geneva Convention. The parish priest of Chukudum says they have been dropped on his village 17 times in the last three years. The local commander of the Sudan People's Liberation Army believes a bombardment in June was aimed at disrupting a tribal chiefs peace council, meeting to discuss the problem of cattle rustling in the area. InterPress 11/7/96
USAID
At the end of May the US Congress freed funds for development work in areas of Sudan outwith government control. The US has barred the regime from receiving any development assistance. No US aid will go to areas of the South controlled by the dissident rebel Riek Machar who has made peace with Khartoum. The aid marks the changing attitude of the US authorities towards Sudan's southern rebels - last year the State Department accused the rebels of wanton brutality saying they "have little to offer the Sudanese people." (Sudan Democratic Gazette 7/96; Congressional Subcommittee on Africa 22/3/95)
Flight bans
Since September 1995 Sudan's government has banned C-130 Hercules transporters from delivering food to the South, alleging the big planes were carrying weapons for the rebels. To areas only reachable by air, food has to be delivered by much smaller Buffaloes. The World Food Programme is only delivering one tenth of planned food aid, and in July said that up to 500000 people in Bahr al-Ghazal and 200000 in other inaccessible parts of the war-torn South may face starvation as a result of the ban. After the intervention of the UN Secretary General the government has lifted the ban for John Garang, leader of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army, visited Europe at the end of June. In Rome he met government and Vatican ministers, and called for economic help to support the development of civil society in the areas under his control. (Reuter 2/7/96)
Dissident southerners attack
Riek Machar's South Sudan Independence Army says it captured two towns on the Ethiopian border from its rival the Sudan People's Liberation Army. 100 SPLA surrendered to Machar's troops with their weapons at Akobo. The SSIA called on Ethiopia, Uganda and Eritrea to support the peace agreement it has signed with Khartoum. (Reuter 30/6/96)
NDA delegation visits Bahr al-Ghazal
The Swiss based Christian Solidarity International arranged for a delegation from the opposition National Democratic Alliance to visit Bahr al-Ghazal. This western province of the South has seen some of the bitterest encounters between northern and southern tribes - most of the country's slave raiding takes place here, where Baggara Arabs take Dinka tribespeople into captivity in the north. The delegation included Mubarak al-Mahdi, one of the most senior exiled members of the banned Umma party, and a member of the Mahdi family which leads the Ansar sect, to which the Baggara owe allegiance; as well as Bona Malwal, a Southern leader closely identified with the opposition National Democratic Alliance. The delegation met Arabs and Dinkas and explained to them why the NDA brought southerners into alliance with moderate Islamist parties like the Umma against the regime. They visited the markets where Arabs and Dinkas trade peacefully in spite of the regime's incitements to race hatred. (Sudan Democratic Gazette 7/96)
IF YOU THINK YOU'VE GOT PROBLEMS ...
... spare a thought for Sudan's finance minister, who can't get all his sums to add up. The costs of the war and the civil service are not met by Sudan's current income, For most of the year the government has kept going by borrowing from its own banks, because no-one outside Sudan will lend the regime money until it squares its account with the International Monetary Fund. The IMF, in turn, demands that the regime stops borrowing to fund deficits, and liberalises the currency. The government has had to spend LS14 billion, about $10 million, on fuel subsidies in the last four months. Borrowing all this cash has put inflation up to 102%. Austerity: Sudan's new finance minister responded to the problems austerely. Fuel prices went up 50 - 60%. In July subsidies on electricity, wheat and flour were scrapped. Instead of metered electricity charges, consumers must pay a flat fee of LS 20000 a month [$16.50]. Ordinary civil servants earn around LS 10000 [$7] a month, and [self employed] tea ladies earn about LS 3000 [$2] a day.
Holiday fun: When Abdel Wahhab Osman the finance minister presented his budget to the new parliament, the deputies called for his resignation. This was not allowed by the speaker, none other than Hassan al-Turabi, leader of Sudan's Islamists and widely believed to be the real ruler of Sudan. He told them they were not to discuss living conditions, only to advise the government, and sent them all on a ten week holiday.
Unions: The government sponsored trade union federation met President al-Bashir to discuss living conditions. Wages cover about 10% of living costs, said the general secretary. He wanted a 35% rise for the minimum wage, to LS 15000 - which would cost $12 million - and he wanted the government elite to stop luxury imports - top officials have imported $167 million of fancy cars, said one parliamentarian.
Cash sources: The government is making money out of the relatively high price of cotton and gum arabic, and the oil fields in Western Upper Nile have begun production, helped by the regime's peace treaty with Riek Machar, the commander of rebel forces in the area, who seems prepared to let the government take the oil out of his lands to be refined in the north.
Long term crisis: However, the
world is suffering from a shortage of cereals all carry reports on how
two American journalists bought two slave boys in a Sudanese market and
returned them to their father. Here is one of their reports: [Two Baltimore]
Sun staffers, Gilbert A. Lewthwaite, a veteran foreign correspondent, who
is white, and Gregory P. Kane, a black columnist, went by charter plane
deep into the Sudanese interior to buy the boys for $500 each - the cash
equivalent of five cows - from an Arab trader in Manyiel, a remote village
in the southern Sudanese province of Bahr al- Ghazal. In their three-part
report, Lewthwaite and Kane wrote: "If we were Sudanese slaveholders,
we might use such children for herding or for household chores in return
for nothing but the crumbs from our table. We might give them Arabic names
and convert them
to Islam. We might use a girl for sexual pleasure, perhaps as a wife. "But
we are not Sudanese Arabs. We are visitors . . . and our mission is not
to perpetuate slavery but to expose it." When Garang Deng Kuot, 10,
and Akok Deng Kuot, 12, were returned to their family after their freedom
was purchased by The Sun staffers, their father, Deng Kuot Mayen, an impoverished
cereal farmer, said: "I call on Almighty God to love all my children
and let them remain happy." The boys, according to their father, were
seized six years ago in a raid on their village by government-backed Arab
militia. The freed boys told The Sun they were forced to work in the fields
without any pay except scraps of food. "I was given to a very bad
man," young Garang told the Sun reporters. "He always made me
do difficult things like carrying away hot ashes. Sometimes he would curse
me. Sometimes I was beaten. No person in the family was kind or good. "Whatever
was left that is what I ate. If nothing was left, I just sat there."
All that Akok Deng, a slave since he was 6, could remember of his abduction
was being lifted up and tied across the back of a horse. Eventually he
arrived at a cattle camp, which was to be his home for six years.
His chore: keeping the fence clean and clearing up dung. Over the years the United Nations, the State Department, and human rights organizations have reported on and denounced slavery - particularly of women and children - in Sudan. The fundamentalist Islamic government in Khartoum has denied that it sanctions slavery. Last November the United Nations reported "an alarming increase . . . in cases of slavery, servitude, slave trade and forced labor" in Sudan. It accused the ruling National Islamic Front in Khartoum of "total lack of interest" in investigating human rights abuses. In March, the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, added his voice to the debate after visiting Sudan during a much-criticized tour of U.S. enemy nations, including Iran, Iraq and Libya. "Where is the proof?" Farrakhan asked reporters after his stop in Khartoum. "If slavery exists, why don't you go as a member of the press, and you look inside Sudan, and if you find it, then you come back and tell the American people what you found?" To get that "proof," the Sun reporters traveled to the front line of civil war, where a rag-tag band of African rebels faces the fire of jihad, or holy war, from the Islamic government's army and its marauding Muslim militia.
The Sun journalists entered Sudan with the help of Christian Solidarity International, a Zurich-based humanitarian group. It is one of the few international aid organizations willing to defy a Sudanese government ban on flights into contested areas. Confronted with The Sun's documentation of slavery, the Sudanese ambassador in Washington, Mahdi Ibrahim Mohamed, repeated the government's denial of any complicity and said any abductions arose from local tribal disputes. "Slavery is not a practice of the government of Sudan," he said. "It is contrary to the value of the people of Sudan and the declared policy of Sudan." The Sun reporters made repeated requests to interview the Rev. Farrakhan after they returned from Sudan, but were told the Nation of Islam leader was not available. (Baltimore Sun 18/6/96)
SUBSCRIPTIONS
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