Press Release

SHRO-Cairo Condemns Sudan Government's Bar Association's Support of Physical Punishment

January 4, 2003

The Sudan Government’s minister of justice, Ali Mohammed Osman Yassin, and lawyer Fathi Khalil for the Sudanese Bar Association, spoke highly of the death penalty and amputations as appropriate penalties once implemented in cases of murder, rape, armed robbery, or waging insurrection against the state.

The NIF’s minister and (his) Bar Association’s government-supporter, however, failed to attribute their penal position to the criminal Law of Sudan, which since the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist coup of June 1989 abrogated the amended law of Sudan (1986-1989) and adopted a harsh version of Shari’a Law that had been earlier rejected by the democratically elected Constituent Assembly of Sudan and the democratic Sudanese Bar Association before their military coup.

The Sudanese Human Rights Organization Cairo Branch is deeply concerned with the government’s reckless handling of physical penalty (including flogging, limb amputations, and executions with crucifying or hanging to death).

As is well known in scholarly studies, as well as professional memorandums by the democratic judges of Sudan’s Judiciary (who were largely dismissed by the Bashir regime), the draft bills of the democratic Bar Association (which has been confiscated by military decrees and unlawfully led by government-oriented candidates), and the human rights’ statements by the other concerned parties in and outside the country, the Nimeiri’s Shari’a Laws (1983-1985) have been nationally condemned together with the Turabi’s proposed criminal law (1988). The Turabi’s version, however, was ruthlessly supported and largely imposed by the ruling party of the NIF rule, including the present-time leaders of the party whether in power or already purged.

The consistent implementation of these savage penalties indicates clearly that there is no reason to believe that the purging of Turabi has converted the ruling regime to a humanitarian group. The bare fact is that once Sudan Government continues to apply the Turabi’s Shari’a penalties, the country will never enjoy international human rights norms or social justice. Nor will crime or criminals cease to exist in the high rates the country suffers today despite the reckless harshness of penalty.

SHRO-Cairo has repeatedly criticized the brutality of the Criminal Law since it is not founded, in any sense, on the philosophical or socio-religious values of the Sudanese society that apply indigenous arbitration, secular judicial precedence, and general principals of international law that are quite consonant with Sudanese religions whether Islam, Christianity, or African spiritual creeds on equal footing.

The Organization has strongly accused the Sudan’s Government of abusing the Criminal Law for political goals that are not related to the traditional religions of the land, the enduring social values of people, or the political traditions of the Sudanese modern Civil Society.

The way to reduce criminality in Sudan is the same way of democratic rule and the respect of civil freedoms and human rights norms that alone would perfectly bring the permanent and just peace to the country with the even distribution of development and the wise recognition of the country’s cultural and religious diversity.

SHRO-Cairo condemns in the strongest terms possible the Sudan Government’s unprofessional, primitive, and sick treatment of crime and criminals for the sake of partisan goals.

SHRO-Cairo condemns in the strongest terms possible the shameless position of lawyer Fathi Khalil who spoke for the Bar Association in full support of the gross violation of the human rights of the sentenced prisoners in favor of death penalty in betrayal of the Bar’s democratic tradition to protect the right of the accused or the sentenced party vis-à-vis the authorities.

SHRO-Cairo calls upon the democratic judges, lawyers, and the other law-enforcement officials of Sudan to adhere to the International conventions on human rights, especially the international agreements on humanitarian law and the UN declarations to abrogate death penalty and the other physical punishments that have never stopped crime or reformed criminals any place in the whole world.

The Organization calls for the abrogation of the present-time Criminal Law provided that it be replaced with the 1974’s Criminal Code and Penal Code, as was approved by the democratic Bar Association of Sudan and the democratically elected Constituent Assembly before the Muslim Brotherhood (NIF) savage dictatorship of Omer al-Bashir, Hassan al-Turabi, and the other Muslim Brotherhood leadership.

SHRO-Cairo appreciates the European Council’s appeal, led by Greece, the Friend of the People of Sudan, to the state managers of the country to respect international human rights norms in the provision and application of penal law.

The Organization calls upon the United Nations Human Rights Commission, of which Sudan’s Government has become a current member, to take appropriate measures to stop the government and its supporting Bar Association from applying physical penalties on the Sudanese citizens who have been suffering the government’s policies of pauperization, political persecution, civil war, and the other abuses of authority that made of death penalty an additional tool of humiliation and political repression in the first place.