Press Release

September 28, 2004

Terrorizing Security Operations to Silence Opposition in the National Capital Khartoum

The Sudan Human Rights Organization Cairo Office received up-dated reports on the occurrence of severe security operations in the National Capital Khartoum.

Following state threats by the President of the Republic to “behead al-Sheikh Hassan al-Turabi,” as well as other terrorizing announcements by the First Vice President Ali Osman Taha and his party assistants to “deal with [the Islamist opponents under arrest] in accordance with the same laws that [the Islamist opponents] had already enforced,” the reports indicated that massive arrests have been secretively launched under heavy application of Emergency Law against many Islamist opponents and other civilian activists.

The Organization has earlier issued detailed reports on the non-democratic nature of the government’s laws that have been grossly violating the rights of citizens since the first day of the Islamists’ 1989 coup to terrorize the opposition and to outlaw the internationally-recognized human rights and civil freedoms in the Sudan.

The most recently announced state threats to apply these laws on political opponents, regardless of their ideological or political affiliations, should be seriously considered a Reinvigorated State Plan to suppress all forms of civil striving against the state managers, irrespective of the ongoing international and national pressures to end the crisis of DarFur or to establish the permanent peace and the democratic governance in the whole country.

The government wrath on the Islamist opponents was practically extended to other civil society’s groups. The National Capital is virtually put under siege, which under the renewable state of emergency law threatens the civilian population with endless abuses of authority by the non-answerable powers of the president and his security assistants.

On Thursday evening, Sa-ti’ Mohamed al-Haj, a human rights activist, was unlawfully detained in an unknown place without charge. The terrorizing campaign placed all civilian activities of the Khartoum area under tight security measures: entrance to public buildings is subjected to harsh security inspection; regular activities in trade companies, lawyers’ firms, and other businesses in the market area are unlawfully questionable.

SHRO-Cairo is gravely concerned with the non-controllable abuses of authority as currently practiced by the government forces in Khartoum. The Organization is also concerned for the “bad faith nature’ of these measures that suggest massive political suppression rather than lawful police work.

· To secure the rights of citizens to enjoy regular activities and business relations, the Organization asks the government to immediately release all activists arrested without charge.

· The government must ensure the right to fair trial to the accused persons, including the right to legal consultation and family visitation. The government must further protect the accused persons from the terrorizing media threats announced by the president and his top assistants.

· To encourage the public to support the government-opposition peaceful negotiations, the Nivasha Peace Protocols, and the humanitarian needs of the victimized populations of DarFur, the Sudan Government must promptly abrogate the emergency law to allow full enjoyment of the freedom of expression and the press, the right to free movement, and the other fundamental rights and public freedoms.