Press Release

November 27, 2002

• Sudan Government Must Respect Academic Freedoms
• Fact-Finding Committee to Investigate the Assault on University Campus
• Minister of Interior, Minister of High Education, Vice Chancellor, and Police Commissioner Must Immediately Resign

The conduct of senior government officials in the events that erupted at the University of Khartoum these few past weeks should be directly linked to the repressive nature of the ruling regime as well as the wrongs of the laws enacted and enforced by the Salvation military coup.

The police law is a significant instrument of criminal justice. The police play a major role in criminal procedure for the protection of detainees and those arrested under criminal investigation for trial. Military governments and other authoritative regimes against the police national mandate for the detection and prevention of crime have continuously abused the Sudanese Police Force. This situation led to a serious deviation from the social and reformative work of police toward the public.

Although the Sudan Police Force has repeatedly made its own stands by the side of people in collaboration with popular movements to overthrow military dictatorships, the Organization is gravely concerned for the shameless attitude of the minister of interior, brigadier Abdel-Rahim Abu Assaiya and the police general Omer al-Haj al-Hidairi who said there would be no apology for the gross violations the police force committed under his direct command against the academic freedoms and student/faculty rights inside the university campus in close collaboration with the vice-chancellor of the university.

The Sudan Police Law was frequently amended for political reasons. The 1984 Act, for example, transformed Sudan Police from a civil force to a para-military institution by inflicting the death penalty on certain offenses akin to the Armed Forces military law. With the overthrow of the May dictatorial regime, a 1985's Act repealed the 1984 law.

New police legislation enacted by the Military Transitional Council in 1986 reinstated unchecked powers for the minister of interior and the police commissioner over the force. These powers undermined the Police Councils that were earlier established to oversee the financial, technical, and administrative affairs of the force.

• The Sudan Human Rights Organization Cairo Branch (SHRO-Cairo) condemns in the strongest terms possible the irresponsible attitude of the vice chancellor that not only failed to protect the university campus, which is his direct responsibility, from police aggression; but has directly collaborated with the transgressing force against his students and faculty.

• The Organization calls for immediate investigation by a fact-finding committee that should require the immediate resignation of the vice chancellor, minister of interior, minister of high education, and police commissioner from their jobs to allow the due process of law.

• SHRO-Cairo asks for fair compensations to the victims of the police attacks against the university.

• The Organization asks the Government of Sudan to abandon the existing laws of police and security bodies that guarantee extra-judicial powers to the executive to abuse the law.

• The Sudan Police Law must be reformed in the light of international norms, specifically the United Nations Code of Conduct for Law-Enforcement Officials (1979). The Code obligates the police and all officers of the law to respect and protect human dignity, use force only when strictly necessary to the extent required for the performance of their duty, abstain from any act of torture, maintain confidentiality of law enforcement and personnel affairs, protect the health of persons in their custody, respect the law, and rigorously oppose and combat any act of corruption.