Day: December 25, 2021

At least 23 inmates charged with minor crimes were released from Wau Central Prison in South Sudan’s Western Bahr el Ghazal State on Thursday.

The decision was taken by the state governor Sarah Cleto as a Christmas gift to the inmates’ families.

Speaking during the release at Wau Central Prison, Governor Sarah Cleto urged the released prisoners to show good faith to their people outside instead of repeating the same crime.

“The message you have to carry to the people is that tell young people and elders that stealing is not good. You have now tried and you stayed in jail for some time,” Sarah said.

Some of the freed inmates who spoke during their release thanked the state governor for sponsoring the payment of their fines.

Charles Nbrende, one of the freed inmates, said they were not expecting that they will reunite with their families again.

“I thank the governor because when we were all in jail, we were not expecting that we will see our families again outside. But God has accepted that we have to see our families again,” he said.

For his part, the State Director for Prison Service, Atok Atem Barac said the release of 23 inmates has given space to the remaining prisoners since the jail was overcrowded.

“The prison only could accommodate 200 inmates, but after the release of 23 inmates, it would provide some space for the rest,” Barac said.

Source: Radio Tamazuj

Desmond Tutu, South Africa’s retired archbishop and anti-apartheid icon, has died aged 90.

Tutu, the Nobel Peace prize laureate who helped end apartheid in South Africa, died on Sunday.

“The passing of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Sunday.

He “distinguished himself as a non-sectarian, inclusive champion of universal human rights”, Ramaphosa added.

The presidency gave no details on the cause of death.

Tutu was diagnosed with prostate cancer in the late 1990s and, in recent years, was hospitalized on several occasions to treat infections associated with his treatment.

“Ultimately, at the age of 90, he died peacefully at the Oasis Frail Care Centre in Cape Town this morning,” Dr Ramphela Mamphele, acting chairperson of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu IP Trust and Co-ordinator of the Office of the Archbishop, said in a statement on behalf of the Tutu family.

Tutu is often hailed as South Africa’s moral conscience and the great reconciler of a nation divided by decades of racist politics.

In 1984, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent opposition to apartheid.

A decade later, he witnessed the end of that regime and he chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up to unearth atrocities committed during the segregation period. Tutu was a longtime friend of the late Nelson Mandela.

Source: Radio Tamazuj

Protesters opposed to military rule in Sudan on Saturday reached the vicinity of the presidential palace in Khartoum, despite heavy tear gas and a communications blackout.

Witnesses said security forces fired tear gas to disperse the crowds. Internet services were disrupted in the capital, Khartoum, and locals were unable to make or receive domestic calls on Saturday, while soldiers blocked roads leading to bridges linking Khartoum with Omdurman, its sister city across the Nile river.

The SUNA state news agency reported that the province of Khartoum closed bridges on Friday evening in anticipation of the protests.

“Departing from peacefulness, approaching and infringing on sovereign and strategic sites in central Khartoum is a violation of the laws,” SUNA reported, citing a provincial security coordination committee.

“Chaos and abuses will be dealt with,” it added.

The demonstrators have demanded that the military has no role in government during a transition to free elections.

Protesters in Khartoum chanted: “Close the street! Close the bridge! Burhan will come straight to you,” referring to the military leader and sovereign council head Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan.

The military could not immediately be reached for comment.

Last Sunday, hundreds of thousands of people marched to the presidential palace and the security forces fired tear gas and stun grenades as they dispersed protesters who had been trying to organize a sit-in.

Forty-eight people have been killed in crackdowns on protests since the coup, the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors said.

Source: Radio Tamazuj

Sudanese security forces have once again responded to anti-coup demonstrations in the capital Khartoum with volleys of tear gas and stun grenades, as protestors converged on the Republican Palace on Saturday.

Witnesses say that a heavy presence of Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and police set up blockades across the main streets of Khartoum, as well as the main Nile bridges that link the main city of Khartoum with Omdurman and Bahri, in anticipation of the marches.

The military junta that seized power in a coup d’état of October 25, also ordered Sudan’s National Telecommunications Corporation (NTC), to restrict internet and telephone, as these are the main channels via which the organising Resistance Committees communicate with the public to coordinate marches. The services were restored later in the day.

It is the second time in a week that pro-democracy protestors have converged on the Republican Palace. The demonstrators included women’s groups, who protested cases of rape, sexual violence and harassment by security forces during the December 19 Marches of the Millions in Khartoum last week, “to condemn the use of sexual and gender based violence to drive women away from demonstrations and silence their voices”.

The Sudanese Doctors Committee reports that after demonstrators who were injured by tear gas cannisters and stun grenades were transferred to hospitals where medics were waiting to treat and casualties, security forces fired tear gas into hospitals, attacking doctors as well as the wounded.

The marches were convened by Resistance Committees across Sudan, to continue the revolution that overthrew the 30-year Al Bashir dictatorship in 2019, and to express their rejection of the military coup d’état of October 25, and the subsequent political agreement, signed by coup leader Gen Abdelfattah El Burhan and Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok.

Source: Radio Dabanga