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The Human Rights Situation in Sudan in 2002
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Repression and Human Rights Abuses in Government-controlled Sudan |
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State of Emergency and Rule by Decree
GoS governance continues to be characterized by repression and a
prevailing disregard for fundamental human rights. In December 2002
the National Assembly, dominated by the ruling (Islamist) National
Congress, approved the extension for another year of the state of
emergency, in effect since December 1999. It also amended the constitution
in May, granting President Omar El-Bashir greater executive powers,
allowing for his indefinite rule, and giving additional powers to
the security forces and police.
Repression of Opposition Political Parties
Repression of opposition political activity remained the norm. The
opposition Popular National Congress (PNC) suffered a series of
arrests and re-arrests; by September some 150 activists throughout
the country were in detention. Its leader, Dr. Hassan Al-Turabi,
remained in prolonged arbitrary detention, mandated by presidential
decree, contrary to a court decision in October 2000 ordering his
release. Followers of a faction of the Umma Party continued to suffer
arrests; in late May security forces arrested at least 25 student
Umma members for attempting to form a students’ union.
Repression of Student Protests
Protests by moderate students at the University of Khartoum were
met by violent action by the State. In October, students protested
over the University’s cancellation of student council elections
and the interference by police in celebrations to mark the anniversary
of a 1964 coup that overthrew the country's first, post-independence
military dictatorship. The students were attacked by security forces
and police and later by Islamist student militia. Many of the moderate
students were injured and, after their release from hospital, taken
into security detention and tortured. Five of the University of
Khartoum's 12 faculties remained closed at the time of writing.
Women Rights
Women have little or no access to resources and lack political and
social support from the State, a situation that was exacerbated
with the imposition of Islamic Shari’a codes in 1983. While
women are integral to the agricultural sector and food production,
they have no legal access to land ownership, and they often do not
control the money generated from their labour. Women deserted by
he husbands are left landless and destitute, since they are not
allowed to stay on the land. Without control over property or land,
women are not able to access credit or loans to advance economically
since the banks will only grant loans to those who can offer property
or land as collateral.
The GoS has pledged to uphold women’s equality by acceding to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. But the State’s treatment of women often defies guarantees of equality embedded in Article 21 of the Sudanese constitution and in international human rights law.
In areas directly affected by war, women bear the greatest burden. While men are away at war women must often assume extra responsibility for their families and communities, in addition to already to being the main suppliers of agricultural labour.
Freedom of the Press
The press experienced intermittent and increased repression. Journalists
and editors were detained and questioned about their publications’
content, newspapers were fined heavily, and editions of many papers
were confiscated because of articles the censors did not like, although
all papers were subjected to prior censorship. While outside support
arrived for the English-language Khartoum Monitor, there was less
support for equally harassed colleagues in the Arabic-language press.
Al Ayam was punished with one day's closure for an article discussing
the health hazards of female genital circumcision (mutilation),
although official government policy opposes the practice.
Persecution of Religious Groups and Individuals
Sudanese churches continued to report various forms of harassment
and persecution by the government including confiscation of church
property and the government’s failure to respond to the churches’
continuing demands that church property seized in previous years
be returned. Also, Christians, Muslims and followers of traditional
religions in some government-controlled areas continued to be made
subject to extremist Islamist teachings. Apostasy continued to be
a crime subject to capital punishment. The interpretation of Shari’a
law in some areas of the country led to severe punishments for such
crimes as robbery and adultery, the latter discriminating particularly
against women. In the oil concession areas of Southern Blue Nile
Christians were reportedly attacked and brutally killed for reasons
of religion.
Justice by “Emergency Tribunal”
Another instrument of repression were “emergency tribunals”
established under the 1998 State of Emergency Act. These courts,
composed of one civilian and two military judges, handed down stringent
sentences summarily, without any respect for the right to a fair
trial. By July 1, at least 19 people had been executed in the Darfur
region after sentencing by these tribunals. Eighty people were summarily
sentenced to death in Darfur, allegedly in response to lethal raids
by the Riziegat Baggara ethnic group on the smaller Ma’alia
tribe.
Other courts also imposed draconian penalties without fair trial, as in the Darfur region where six men were sentenced to amputations and cross amputations (one hand and the opposite foot amputated) for crimes such as robbery and the unlicensed possession of weapons in December 2001. In that month, a court in Southern Darfur sentenced an 18-year-old Dinka woman to death by stoning under shari’a (Islamic law) for the crime of adultery; she did not have legal representation or an interpreter. After international protest the sentence was overturned on appeal, but the trial court imposed 40 lashes, administered on the spot, without counsel or right of appeal.
Human Rights Defenders
Fledgling human rights organizations and monitors in Khartoum (the
only place in government areas they could exist) continued to be
at risk of arbitrary arrest and harassment. They were subjected
to harassment and arrest of their leaders by security forces; Toby
Madut, head of one human rights group in Khartoum that speaks for
the rights of southerners in the North, was briefly jailed in 2002.
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War-related Human Rights Abuses |
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Attacks on Civilians
The war continued to be a major source of human rights abuses. The
Sudanese government continued to attack, kill and displace civilian
populations, even after it agreed to the fourth Danforth agreement
(see section D belop) calling for no targeted attacks on civilians.
The most active theatre of war was the oilfield areas of Western
Upper Nile/Unity State. There, the government brought in Islamist
militia and Arab Baggara militia troops (muraheleen) to supplement
its regular troops in attacking the civilian population and occasionally
the rebels.
The government relied more heavily in 2002 on its growing air force to bomb locations throughout the rebel areas and to reinforce garrison towns. Numerous well-documented incidents of intentional aerial bombing of civilian targets (with no military significance) occurred during 2002. On February 20, government helicopter gunships attacked Bieh, a food distribution site in the Western Upper Nile/Unity State oilfield region, killing 24 civilians and injuring many more. The attack was witnessed by U.N. food monitors and condemned worldwide including by the Canadian government. The Sudan government later apologized for the “accident,” and in March signed with the SPLM/A the agreement not to attack civilians or civilian objects.
According to Sudanese churches, in June government aircraft bombed the compound of the Roman Catholic bishop of Torit in Ikotos, Eastern Equatoria, injuring at least four construction workers. On September 21, the government bombed a cattle camp near Lui, Bahr El Ghazal, and killed 13 Dinka cattle herders (four of them children) and more than 50 cattle.
According to local sources, on March 13, 2002, SPLA forces attacked the village of Tuhubak, already under SPLA control east of Torit. Some 200 forces burned all the 173 homes in this village, population 970, and killed at least 25 civilians, mostly elderly, women, and children. An SPLA pre-dawn attack on the village of Todaj, north of Abyei on September 21, resulted in the capture and conscription of some 45 civilians, including many children under the age of 15. The SPLA forces reportedly tortured and humiliated the chief and looted the village and all the cattle. The 45 captives were taken to SPLA territory and held for two weeks, then released.
Oil and Conflict
Oil continued to be a major source of conflict and human rights
abuses. In January 2002, Cmdr. Riek Machar (who in 1991 led a breakaway
faction from the SPLM/A and in 1997 signed a peace agreement with
the government) and the SPLM/A announced their forces were merging,
and a local Nuer commander in Block 5A switched loyalties to the
SPLM/A. The oil consortium operating south of Bentiu in Block 5A
led by Swedish company Lundin then announced its operations were
suspended due to insecurity, and until a negotiated peace was reached.
At this time of writing, only the consortium involving Canada’s
Talisman Energy continued to produce oil for export, at 230,000
barrels per day, from one concession. Oil revenue was at least 20
percent of government income in 2001, and the military budget consumed
about 60 percent of oil revenue in that year.
In early 2002, the pro-government Nuer (southern) militia of Gen. Paulino Matiep joined forces with the muraheleen and conducted scorched earth campaigns to drive tens of thousands of Nuer residents from their homes in the oil concession areas. On horseback the muraheleen crossed rivers to Nuer areas (inaccessible before the oil companies built bridges). Women and children in Western Upper Nile/Unity State were abducted and raped by the muraheleen, Matiep’s militia, and government army forces in early 2002; it was feared that the muraheleen enslaved those abducted. In March 2002, the World Food Programme (WFP) and Operation Lifeline Sudan conservatively estimated that 174,200 individuals remained displaced due to the oilfields war.
In October, Talisman announced its was selling its stake in Sudan to ONGC Videsh Ltd., an Indian state-owned oil company. January 31, 2003 has been stated for closure of the deal. Talisman continues to deny any association with war or human rights violations in the oil regions, despite evidence gathered and reported by independent experts during the four years of its period of operations in Sudan. In April KAIROS staff traveled to northern Bahr al-Ghazal and interviewed many Nuer who days before had been violently displaced from their homes near Mankien, a town in the southern reaches of the Kaikang (Block 4) concession licenced to Talisman and other companies. Those interviewed reported attacks by helicopter gunships and ground forces and said that many family members had been brutally killed. Neither Talisman nor the Sudanese embassy in Canada responded to KAIROS’s letters concerning the incident.
In December, in violation of the cease fire agreement, the GoS launched a major offensive in the oil-rich region of Western Upper Nile (WUN). It included attacks on civilians and the displacement of hundreds if not thousands. Reports of major military build-ups by the government in strategic garrison towns in southern Sudan portend plans for offensive action and strongly suggest that Khartoum is not sincere about negotiating peace. That the Civilian Protection and Monitoring Team (CPMT) will travel to southern Sudan to verify mutual claims of cease fire violations is a welcome initiative, and KAIROS hopes it will carry out its mission as expeditiously as possible. However, the CPMT’s investigative orientation is principally military and lacks sufficient civilian expertise in human rights, ethnography, the context of the conflict, etc. There continues to be an urgent need for independent, international human rights monitoring in all areas of conflict but especially the oil concession areas.
The GoS reportedly built several arms plants to become self-sufficient in weapons and ammunition. In August 2002, Russia confirmed the export to Sudan in 2001 of 22 armored combat vehicles and twelve attack helicopters. Under a defense cooperation agreement with Russia, first discussed in December 2001, Sudan negotiated to buy some 12 MiG_29 fighter planes said to be worth U.S.$120 million. The contract was to be finalized in May 2002, according to media reports citing Russian defense industry sources. Many human rights organizations believe that the GoS is using oil revenues to cover the costs of these exceedingly expensive projects and weapons, despite having pledged to use the profits for desperately-needed social and infrastructure development. The U.N. special rapporteur again in 2002 called on the Sudan government to provide transparency in accounting for its oil revenues. When he did the GoS refused to permit him to enter Sudan for his regular visit in the latter half of 2002, although through the intervention of the German government, he was finally invited to visit in October.
Slavery
The muraheleen who with the government army “protected”
the rail line from Babanusa to Wau in Bahr El Ghazal used this role
also to carry out several slave raids in 2002. The government's
Committee for the Eradication of Abduction of Women and Children
(CEAWC) continued to exist but failed to alleviate the slavery problem
as local administrations in Baggara areas refused to cooperate in
turning over enslaved persons. The Danforth-proposed slavery commission,
composed of eminent international persons and field workers, conducted
its research and issued a well-received report on slavery and abductions
in Sudan in May, with many recommendations. Much work remains to
fully implement the recommendations at this time of writing.
Land Mines
On a positive note, a series of new mine action projects were initiated
in the Nuba Mountains, with a number of assessments on both sides.
Operation Save Innocent Lives, a southern Sudanese NGO, cleared
a total of 526 kms of road and 263,093 square meters of land between
April 2001 and March 2002. Both the government and the SPLM/A renewed
pledges not to use anti-personnel mines anywhere in Sudan, although
there were still unconfirmed allegations of use by both sides. Evidence
of land mine use by the Sudanese government emerged with the death
on June 11 of six agricultural aid workers at a project in an SPLM/A
area of the Nuba Mountains, close to government lines. The SPLA
apparently mined a road in the oilfields of Sudan north of Lerr,
Western Upper Nile/Unity State, in September, killing four or five
road construction workers in a military convoy.
Forced Recruitment and “Child Soldiers”
The government continued to require high school students, ages 16
and older, to serve in the Popular Defense Force (PDF, an Islamist
government militia), often sending them – with inadequate
training – as child soldiers to the front lines. Its militias
continued to forcibly recruit southerners residing in Khartoum as
well as those living in the south, among them many underage boys.
The SPLA continued to recruit underage soldiers in or near battlefields,
while at the same time it
demobilized thousands of underage soldiers elsewhere. Child soldiers
are still common in SPLA ranks. In August Human Rights Watch interviewed
SPLA soldiers aged 15 and 16 (recruited two years earlier) from
small tribes of Southern Blue Nile.
Summary Execution of the Wounded and Captured
The GoS continued to deny access by the International Committee
of the Red Cross (ICRC) to anyone detained in connection with the
conflict, despite an explicit provision in the Nuba Mountains agreement
for ICRC access to those persons. This obstruction and other evidence
leads to the conclusion that the government army is executing captured
combatants on the basis of a “take no prisoners” order,
a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
The SPLA captured the garrison town of Kapoeta earlier in 2002, and also Torit, a town 100 kms east of Juba, the largest southern town (under government control since the beginning of the war). Reportedly, government casualties were high and SPLA summarily executed many of the captured and wounded.
When instances of rape and other abuses by SPLA soldiers against persons displaced from Raga, Western Bahr El Ghazal, were reported, the SPLA authorities singled out those thought responsible and summarily executed several soldiers, on the basis of summary courts martial not subject to appeal. Reports of summary executions of captured non-southern enemy soldiers ordered by SPLA Cmdr. Peter Gatdet circulated, but the SPLA seemingly took no action to rein in this commander. The SPLM/A did permit ICRC access in five or six locations to its “prisoners of war,” mostly non-southerners.
Human Rights Defenders in SPLA controlled Areas
In SPLA-controlled southern Sudan and areas of the Nuba Mountains,
small steps were taken to build a civic administration, funded by
foreign governments. However, there was still little space for the
establishment and growth of an independent human rights entity,
albeit several indigenous NGOs, including women's groups, said they
were attempting to play that role informally.
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Efforts Toward a Just and Lasting Peace |
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IGAD Peace Talks on Sudan
In 2002, the Government of Sudan (GoS) and Sudan People’s
Liberation/Movement/Army (SPLM/A) made significant strides toward
peace and respect for human rights. Between January and March, U.S.
Special Presidential Envoy for Peace in Sudan, John Danforth, brokered
four agreements: (1) an internationally monitored cease-fire in
the Nuba Mountains for humanitarian access purposes; (2) "zones
of tranquility" for polio, rinderpest, and guinea worm vaccination
and health programs; (3) an international commission to investigate
slavery; and (4) an internationally monitored end to attacks on
civilians and civilian objects.
In June and July, the U.S., United Kingdom, and Norway took a role as lead mediators at the Inter-governmental Authority on Development peace talks between the Sudanese government and the SPLM/A, hosted and led by the Kenyan government. On July 20, the parties signed initial peace protocols in Machakos, Kenya, agreeing to a referendum in which the south would be able to choose between unity or independence, following a six-month pre-interim and six-year interim period after the signing of a final peace agreement.
The Machakos Protocol referred in the preamble to human rights and the parties’ desire to establish a “framework for governance through which human rights would be guaranteed,” and stated their desire to find “a comprehensive solution that respected the fundamental human and political rights of all Sudanese peoples, including agreement to establish a democratic system of governance.”
In October, both parties agreed to a cessation of hostilities and to allow unimpeded humanitarian access to all war-affected areas.
At the time of writing, the parties have reconvened in Kenya for talks on wealth sharing. However, a resurgence of fighting in the oil-rich regions of Western Upper Nile threatens to roll back hard-won gains if not kill the peace talks altogether. The concerted efforts of mediating countries as well as countries like Canada are more critical than ever if the momentum toward a final agreement is to be maintained.
Sustained international pressure will be necessary to keep the warring parties at the negotiating table and to achieve an agreement that will result in a just and lasting peace. Engagement by civil society actors on both sides is essential. While Canada has a limited role in the official peace process, it can help to sustain international pressure and facilitate much-needed civil society engagement for peace in Sudan. The Machakos Protocol, while a significant step forward, needs to be made more comprehensive. It should incorporate a role for human rights, democracy, and civil society in the ongoing peace negotiations. Canada is also in a position to contribute to this effort.
Grassroots Peace Building
Efforts toward peace have been greatly assisted through initiatives
of Sudanese churches, in particular, the New Sudan Council of Churches
(NSCC). The NSCC’s grassroots “People to People”
peace building program continued to foster reconciliation among
ethnic groups in southern Sudan. In August, the NSCC sponsored a
reconciliation conference in Eastern Equatoria near Chukudum between
the Didinga and the SPLA army and their Bor Dinka relatives living
as displaced persons in the area. The conference ended years of
low-level warfare with many civilian casualties between the Didinga
and SPLA. The area remains heavily mined, however, with most of
the mines planted by the SPLA. In addition, the NSCC sponsored a
landmark conference in October on reconciliation and governance
that brought together representatives of civil society organizations
from southern and northern Sudan.
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Recommendations |
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| 1. | Canada should work assiduously to ensure that the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, at its 59th Session, passes a strong resolution on Sudan and renews the mandate of the special rapporteur for another year. |
| 2. | The resolution on Sudan should press the Government of Sudan to:
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| 3. | The resolution on Sudan should press the SPLM/A to:
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| 4. | Canada should make a special effort to consider and support proposals for initiatives that would deploy independent, international human rights monitors to any war-affected area of Sudan. Such initiatives are a critical means of saving civilian lives and livelihoods and are an important investment in securing a lasting peace. |
| 5. | Canada should support a comprehensive peace process, building on the Machakos talks, that includes input from Sudanese civil society initiatives. Input from civil society is essential if peace is to be sustainable. |
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