Category: General

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Friday designated Adama Dieng as an expert on human rights in Sudan, following a request from the UN Human Rights Council. The designation follows a special session of the Council held on Sudan on 5 November, to discuss the implications of the October 25 military takeover on the human rights situation in the country, after which the Council adopted resolution HRC/RES/S-32/1, which requested the High Commissioner to designate an expert on human rights in Sudan.

A press statement form the Council announced that the High Commissioner has designated Adama Dieng, a Senegalese national. According to the resolution, Dieng will monitor the developing human rights situation in Sudan with the assistance of, and in close cooperation with, the UN Joint Human Rights Office in Sudan. In performing his duties, he will pay special attention to victims and ensure a gender perspective. He will engage with all relevant parties, including civil society.

The work undertaken by Dieng will contribute to the written report that the High Commissioner will present to the Human Rights Council in its fiftieth session in June 2022.

Dieng is currently a member of the United Nations Internal Justice Council and the Special Adviser to the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity. He is a former UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide. Before joining the UN, for 10 years, Dieng was the Secretary-General of the International Commission of Jurists. Dieng also served as Registrar of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda from 2001 to 2008. He helped establish the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights and produced the draft of the African Convention to fight corruption. He has led many fact-finding missions on human rights and rule of law as well as trial observation missions.

He will assume his duties immediately, and his term of office as an expert for Sudan will conclude upon restoration of the country’s civilian-led government.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has urged all Sudanese parties to cooperate with Dieng to ensure the implementation of the Human Rights Council resolution.

Source: Radio Dabanga

Human Rights Watch has urged the African Union to pledge its support for the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which opens a session Monday, the last meeting of the year.

Human Rights Watch, in a statement Sunday, also called for the AU to “urgently tackle the deepening human rights and democratic crises affecting the continent, including in Ethiopia,” at the Commission’s 69th ordinary session.

“In Ethiopia, in the face of intensifying and a widening field of fighting, with attendant abuses and impact beyond the Tigray region,” HRW said, “it is especially important for the AU to demonstrate a commitment to enforcing member states’ obligations under its strong human rights standards and norms.”

Carine Kaneza Nantulya, HRW’s African advocacy director, said, “The growing gap between the AU political organs and African human rights institutions is threatening to undo decades of developments in African human rights law.”

HRW also noted that the AU failed to consistently apply two of its legal instruments — the AU Constitutive Act and the Charter of Democracy, Elections and Governance when dealing with Sudan and Chad.

“This year, the AU promptly suspended Sudan after the October 25 military coup but did not take similar action after the Chadian military takeover in late April,” the statement said. “The ACHPR condemned Chadian security forces for using excessive force against peaceful protesters demanding a return to civilian rule and called for prompt, credible investigations, and accountability.”

Nantulya said in the statement, “In a context of intensifying crises, with wide-ranging regional human rights and humanitarian repercussions, AU member states should stop choosing politics over human rights and instead rally behind African-led conflict prevention and investigation mechanisms.”

Source: Voice of America

Displaced in a large number of camps in Darfur were among the tens of thousands of people who took to the streets in Sudan on Saturday to protest military rule. Sudanese abroad simultaneously expressed their rejection of the military coup of October 25.

Yagoub Abdallah Furi, spokesperson for the Darfur Displaced and Refugee Camps General Coordination, told Radio Dabanga that thousands of displaced people demonstrated in “almost all camps” in the conflict-torn western region, demanding civilian rule and the return of Abdallah Hamdok as prime minister.

Furi accused the director of the security apparatus in South Darfur of preventing journalists from covering the protests in the towns and the camps in the state.

He said that the participants of the November 13 Marches of the Millions in the large Kalma camp near Nyala, capital of South Darfur, raised banners rejecting military rule.

Others called for a Sudanese-Sudanese dialogue as a way out of the current situation.

The spokesperson expressed his happiness about the absence of reports about violence used by the authorities against the displaced demonstrators.

Protests abroad

Darfuri refugees in eastern Chad camps as well demonstrated for a civilian government.

They said that the military government of Omar Al Bashir (1989-2019), of which the current military leaders were part of is to be held responsible for genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity.

“The continuation of a military regime in Sudan means that we cannot return to our places of origin in Darfur,” they stated.

Sudanese in many other countries simultaneously expressed their rejection of the military coup of October 25 and the putschists’ announcement of a restructured Sovereignty Council on Thursday.

After Rajaa Nikola was reinstated as member of the Sovereignty Council, it was announced that she represented the Coptic community in Sudan. Several Sudanese Copts however, immediately denied the statement during the protests and on social media.

Source: Radio Dabanga

Sudanese security forces fired live ammunition and tear gas on pro-democracy demonstrators Saturday, killing at least five, according to witnesses, as nationwide protests continued following a recent coup.

“Million-person” marches have been held by the pro-democracy movement

since Sudan’s civilian government was ousted on October 25 in a military takeover.

Security forces closed bridges between central Khartoum and its twin cities of Omdurman and Khartoum North. As protesters began to gather in those cities, security forces fired tear gas and chased them to prevent them from reaching central meeting points, witnesses said.

During previous rallies, security forces had waited until later in the day before trying to disperse protester.

The Sudan Doctors Committee said at least five protesters were killed in Khartoum and Omdurman, four from gunshots and one from a tear gas canister. The committee said several others were wounded, including by live rounds.

Saturday’s protests came two days after Sudanese military chief General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan reappointed himself the head of the country’s interim governing body.

The military coup occurred after weeks of escalating tensions between military and civilian leaders over Sudan’s transition to democracy.

The coup has threatened to derail the process that began after the ouster of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in a 2019 popular uprising.

At least 15 coup protesters have been killed by excessive force used by the country’s security forces, according to the United Nations and Sudanese doctors.

Source: Voice of America

An unknown number of residents of the Naivasha camp for the displaced near Shangil Tobaya in Tawila, North Darfur, were killed and injured in attacks by militant herders on Thursday evening. During protests against the recent resurgence of violence in the area, a man and a child were shot dead. In neighbouring Dar El Salam locality, gunmen burned hundreds of houses.

Listeners told Radio Dabanga from Shangil Tobaya that hundreds of people took to the streets in the town on Thursday, to protest against the killing of two displaced farmers by militant herders the day before.

The angry demonstrators took set fire to the Shangil Tobaya police station and barricaded the weekly market. Military forces shot at the demonstrators, killing two people, one of them a minor.

On the same day, a herder was found killed near the Naivasha camp.

In the evening, “a large number of gunmen riding on camels launched a violent retaliatory attack on the camp, and set fire to hundreds of homes” the sources reported. They said that people were killed and injured, but could not provide detailed information about numbers.

Radio Dabanga has tried to contact the governor of North Darfur and the local authorities, but was unable to reach them.

More houses destroyed by fire

In Dar El Salam locality, neighbouring Tawila, “a group of armed men” torched hundreds of houses in Amgeigou village.

Villagers from the area reported that “the people of Amgeigou fled their homes in the past two months because of the continuous attacks by armed men”.

They said that a delegation of villagers requested the North Darfur authorities in a meeting in the North Darfur capital of El Fasher to enable them to return to Amgeigou to collect the property they had to leave when they fled. “The attackers however pre-empted the return of the villagers and burned all the houses including their contents.”

houses including their contents.”

‘Licensed’

According to Sudan researcher and analyst Eric Reeves, the Arab militiamen in North Darfur “see the coup as a license to resume attacks on non-Arab farmers without fear their crimes will be communicated”.

In a tweet on Wednesday, Reeves posted a report on the “widespread ethnic violence” in the region, saying that a new wave of displacement is taking place in Tawila. “Around 2018 families have managed to reach Zamzam camp in the past 48 hours,” . Among them are “many women who suffered horrendous beatings-many with broken arms and elbows, many more who suffered blows to the heads [..]”.

Source: Radio Dabanga

Yesterday evening, people in various neighbourhoods in Khartoum took to the streets to protest against the reinstated Transitional Sovereignty Council (TSC) and call for a civilian government, chaired by Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok. The Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) strongly condemned the move.

On Thursday, Gen Abdelfattah El Burhan, Commander-in-Chief of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and leader of the military junta that seized power in Sudan in a coup d’état on October 25, made known that the Sovereignty Council will be reinstated under his chairmanship, with the same military members and rebel leaders as before but with a new set (with one exception) of civilian members.

In response, the Central Leadership Council of the FFC, that cooperated with the military in establishing the government of Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok in 2019, and again in February this year, issued a statement condemming the announcement of the coup leader.

“This afternoon, Thursday, November 11, the commander of the military coup in the country announced the members of the coup regime’s Sovereignty Council in a way that clearly confirms its indifference to the pulse of the street and the forces of life, and its continuation of unilateral measures in the same way as the former regime [of ousted President Omar Al Bashir],” the statement reads.

“The Council announced today does not represent a Sovereignty Council, but rather a mixed coup council. [..] We affirm that the attempts of harassment, violence, and arbitrary arrests will not stop our [protest] marches. The revolution has begun anew to liberate the country from all putschists, and the streets will not betray us.”

Khartoum witnessed various street protests immediately after the announcement and later that day, as various tweets reported in defiance of the persisting general Internet blackout.

According to a number of tweets, people in Kalakla, Ed Deim, Burri, El Taif, El Riyadh took to the streets and sang slogans such as “Burhan malu ayan?, Aaradu shinu? Aafa wa bayan, Alaju shinu? Kober yaman” [What’s wrong with Burhan, is he sick? What are the symptoms? Exemptions and statements, And his treatment? Kober Prison].

Source: Radio Dabanga