Sudan Lawmakers Cancel Meeting on Constitutional Changes for Omar al-Bahsir

KHARTOUM, LELEMUKU.COM - Sudan's state-run news agency says a parliamentary committee tasked with amending the constitution to allow President Omar al-Bashir to run for another term has abruptly canceled its meeting.

SUNA says the meeting was scheduled for Sunday but has been postponed for "emergency reasons." It says a new date will be announced later.

Sudan has been rocked by a wave of protests since December calling on al-Bashir, who seized power in a 1989 military coup, to step down. Activists say at least 57 people have been killed, but the government tally stands at 30.

Al-Bashir has vowed to run for another term, saying the country can only change leadership through elections. (VOA)

High-level Detainee Accuses Kenya, South Sudan of Kidnapping

KHATOUM, LELEMUKU.COM - “I was terrified ... I knew that I was heading for a terrible situation.” For the first time, the spokesman for South Sudan’s armed opposition leader has spoken out about his alleged kidnapping in neighboring Kenya, deportation to his home country and death sentence.

James Gatdet Dak, one of the highest-profile detainees during South Sudan’s five-year civil war, spoke to The Associated Press shortly after his pardon and release under a fragile peace deal signed in September. Now in neighboring Sudan while seeking asylum in Sweden, he says he is ready to have his story told.

His account, which has been shared with a United Nations commission of inquiry, asserts that high-level Kenyan authorities collaborated with South Sudan’s government to seize him from his Nairobi home in November 2016 and force him onto a plane for deportation to a country where he feared for his life.

At a detention facility near the Nairobi airport, a high-ranking Kenyan police officer told him there had been a deal between the presidents of Kenya and South Sudan. “There’s no way they’re going to help you,” Dak said, recalling the officer’s words.

Soft-spoken and one of the most trusted colleagues of opposition leader Riek Machar, Dak had fled to Kenya shortly after the civil war began in late 2013.

When Dak was seized, he said, Kenyan authorities told him he was being deported because of his statement supporting the dismissal of the Kenyan force commander for South Sudan’s U.N. peacekeeping mission. The U.N. had been sharply criticized for not acting quickly to protect the Terrain hotel complex from a deadly rampage by South Sudanese soldiers in July 2016.

Dak said he resisted boarding the plane to South Sudan, pleading for help from a flight attendant at the Nairobi airport.

″(I told her) I’m press secretary for a rebel leader who’s fighting that government and these people are kidnapping me,” he said. She prevented him from leaving, but Dak said Kenyan national security officers forced him onto an afternoon flight, warning that if he struggled he’d be handcuffed and carried onboard.

He didn’t fight back, Dak said. “I thought it was meaningless to resist.”

Machar’s frantic calls for assistance to Kenya’s deputy president and attorney general were futile, Dak said. An opposition member who saw Dak detained at the airport confirmed that Machar, then based in South Africa, made the calls but to no avail. The opposition member spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Kenya’s government spokesman, Eric Kiraithe, would not comment on Dak’s case but said Kenya is committed to making sure “peace was accelerated” in its neighbor.

South Sudan’s government denied any collaboration with Kenya in the case. Dak was detained on arrival for fueling the conflict with a Facebook post he made when fresh fighting broke out in the capital, Juba, in July 2016, government spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny said. The post alleged that President Salva Kiir had attempted to arrest Machar, his deputy at the time, at the presidential palace.

Dak said he spent two years behind bars, including almost 10 months in solitary confinement in a national security prison. Locked in a tiny, dark cell 24 hours a day, he said he lost more than 20 kilograms (44 pounds) on a daily meal of beans and porridge.

He said he maintained his sanity by reading the Bible and trying not to dwell on whether he would be killed. He said he went months before gaining access to a lawyer, who quit during his trial while calling the process unfair.

Fifteen months into his prison term, Dak was charged with treason and sentenced to death.

The peace deal saved him. Two years to the day after he said he was kidnapped in Nairobi, he was released with another opposition member, William Endley, a South African former defense colonel. Machar had demanded that all political detainees be released, per the terms of the peace deal, before he would return to South Sudan.

And yet many political prisoners remain behind bars without charge. Two other opposition figures who disappeared from Kenya, lawyer Dong Samuel Luak and government critic Aggrey Ezbon Idri, went missing from Nairobi two years ago. Both were last seen in a South Sudan national security prison, Human Rights Watch said last month.

The U.N. commission on human rights in South Sudan said it remains deeply concerned by the “complicity of the governments of Kenya and South Sudan” in the unlawful removal and transfer of Dak, chairwoman Yasmin Sooka told the AP last month. Dak has given the commission a detailed report of his ordeal but said that for now he is not taking legal action.

Currently in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, the 45-year-old father of five is waiting to be reunited in Sweden with the family he hasn’t seen in years.

While Dak said he is grateful for his freedom, he doesn’t feel safe after receiving threats from South Sudan government loyalists that if he criticizes the government it could all happen again. He is taking a break from politics while deciding what to do next.

Despite the harrowing experience, he said he has no regrets.

“It was worth it,” Dak said. “What I was doing I believed was good for the country, it was good for the people of South Sudan, because we need change.” (VOA)

Internet Shutdowns Mushroom Across Africa

KINSHASHA, LELEMUKU.COM - The last two years have been grim for internet access on the African continent, according to analyst Robert Besseling of risk-assessment firm EXX Africa, and the situation may be getting worse. In the last four weeks alone, no fewer than five African governments have temporarily shut down internet access amid political crises and unrest.

While this practice dates back several years, he says it has accelerated and hit nations that rely on the internet for spreading information and for internet-based commerce, like Zimbabwe.

“We counted 21 shutdowns across Africa in 2018, and so far this year in the first three weeks of 2019, we saw shutdowns in five countries: again, Cameroon, as well as most prominently, Zimbabwe, as well as during the elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and unrest in Sudan, as well as briefly following the attempted coup in Gabon," Besseling said.

Those five nations have one thing in common: recent political unrest. Congo's shutdown occurred during a chaotic, disputed, long-delayed election and its contentious aftermath. In Zimbabwe, fuel price hikes led to violent protests, which led to even more violent crackdowns by security officials, which was followed by an internet blackout.

Congolese rights activist Sylvain Saluseke - who lives in self-imposed exile outside of the country — says his compatriots in pro-democracy youth group LUCHA struggled under the blackout as they tried to carry out their mission of observing the December 30 polls and documenting the aftermath.

“That was a major hindrance," he told VOA. "Of course, beyond that, there have always been these questions of how less are we able to pass on information or exchange information, and that in itself raised the risk of if and when somebody has been arrested, or somebody goes into any dangerous situations or risky situations."

Stopping the flow of information is the point of these internet shutdowns, argues Edgar Munatsi of the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights. Other rights groups have claimed the same, saying this was a tactic to give cover to the rampant human rights abuses that happened — and still may be happening — in Zimbabwe.

“Beyond just stopping people from organizing themselves, was the need to black out, in terms of the media and the international community, to what was taking place during the night, and sometimes during the day," Munatsi told journalists. "Because a lot of atrocities were committed during the night and during the internet shutdowns. If you realize, most civil society leaders and activists in Zimbabwe were abducted during the night, and no one knows, up to now, where they are, some of them.”

Besseling, who assesses the continent from a business perspective, notes that African nations have an easier time shutting down or forcibly slowing down internet services, because many African telecom companies are under state control.

The shutdowns come at a high cost, he says.

“If you were to shut down the internet throughout the geography of an economically important country, then you can estimate of course a far higher cost. In a country like Kenya, for example, the cost would be $6.3 million a day, in the case the internet was shut down across the country.”

Those losses come, he said, through disruptions in information networks — such as internet-accessible stock and commodity price indices — and the unavailability of e-commerce and electronic banking.

He said there are other losses that can’t be easily quantified, though, like getting reliable information about what’s going on around you, or perhaps hardest of all, losing touch with loved ones during a time of crisis. (VOA)

Protests Rock Sudanese Cities, One More Dead

KHARTOUM, LELEMUKU.COM - Protests raged across Sudanese cities Thursday and another demonstrator died in the most widespread rallies of anti-government unrest that began last month.

The 24-year-old man died from his wounds in Omdurman, a city across the Nile from the capital Khartoum, where crowds were railing against Sudan's three-decade ruler Omar al-Bashir.

That took the official death toll from unrest since Dec. 19 to 29, according to government investigatory committee spokesman Amer Mohamed Ibrahim.

Rights groups put the total at more than 40.

Trouble raged into the night in Omdurman, with smoke billowing over a street barricaded by steel poles, burning tires and tree branches.

In Khartoum, security forces fired tear gas at protesters in various neighborhoods, witnesses said. At night, smoke wafted over Khartoum, fires burned and a main street was blocked.

There were also protests in the eastern cities of Port Sudan and al-Qadarif, where hundreds gathered in the main market area, chanting "Down, that's it! Freedom, freedom."

Triggered by a worsening economic crisis, protests calling for Bashir to step down have spread into the most sustained challenge yet to his rule.

The opposition Sudanese Professionals' Association, a union group that has led calls for demonstrations, had urged protesters to rally from early afternoon and march to Bashir's palace on the banks of the Nile.

The group said on its social media sites that protesters had gathered in cities including Madani and Sennar south of Khartoum as well as smaller towns.

Many protests were reported in Gezira state and witnesses said demonstrators had blocked the main road in al-Nuba district, also south of Khartoum.

Security forces have used tear gas, stun grenades and live ammunition to disperse demonstrations, as well as arresting hundreds of protesters and opposition figures.

Authorities have blamed the unrest on "infiltrators" and foreign agents, and said they are taking steps to resolve Sudan's economic problems. (VOA)

Sudanese-British Billionaire Mo Ibrahim Calls on Sudan’s Al-Bashir to Stop Deadly Protest Crackdowns

LONDON, LELEMUKU.COM - A month of deadly protests across Sudan represents a “total rejection” of President Omar al-Bashir’s 30-year rule, said Mohammed “Mo” Ibrahim, a Sudanese-British billionaire and founder of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.

Since mid-December, Sudanese youth have taken to the streets to protest failed policies, repression, government-sanctioned torture, ongoing conflict and a deteriorating economy that has left many unsure of their next meal.

“People are hungry, and they see the looting of the country’s resources by the ruling clique,” Ibrahim told VOA by phone Friday. “Just, people had enough.”

Protests erupted last month over concerns about the government’s economic policies, Ahmed Elzobier, a Sudan researcher at Amnesty International, told VOA.

After violent crackdowns across the country, which human rights groups say have left more than 40 people dead, protesters’ demands have expanded, Elzobier added.

Now, they want the country’s leadership to step aside.

“People just eat bread because you cannot afford anything else,” Ibrahim said. “When they are pushed against the wall, they just have nothing to lose.”

Impunity

Ibriham decried a culture of impunity that has, so far, shielded Bashir and the ruling party, the National Congress Party. Politicians openly flaunt their power, Ibrahim said, while the country’s 40 million people can only watch.

“If 70 percent of the budget is allocated to the president, at his whims, to spend on the militias, the armies, the security forces — what is left? Thirty percent to support education, health, agriculture, road infrastructure, clean water?” Ibrahim said. “This is not a way to run a country.”

Ibrahim said protesters face “a huge array of armed forces” in the capital, Khartoum, and across the country.

“The people of Sudan were courageously going out in the street everywhere — in every single town and city and village in Sudan, demonstrating and asking those guys to go,” he said.

But security forces have abused their power, Elzobier added, putting protesters at risk.

“We received many reports from different activists and human rights defenders that the Sudanese security forces use lethal force — live ammunition — against protesters,” Elzobier said.

Government empathy

With protesters showing no signs of relenting, the government has made a point to acknowledge their concerns.

Bashir has called the youth “the future of Sudan” and said he respects their right to protest “in search of better conditions,” promising to make their “just demands” a reality, Al Arabiya, a Dubai-based, Saudi-owned news organization reported Sunday.

But the government has shown two sides, according to Amnesty.

Despite their gestures of appeasement, the ruling party also wants to protect the government and its grip on power. To do that, Elzobier said, they’ve enlisted the help of “shadowy groups” — heavily armed militias that travel in unmarked pickup trucks wearing masks.

The country’s former vice president has said this armed militia “will protect the regime at any cost,” Elzobier added.

Outside help

As the protesters press on, Amnesty has called for the immediate cease of lethal force, the unconditional release of peaceful protesters and an investigation into those who have committed crimes against civilians.

But Ibrahim said the Sudanese people need help outside the country to find justice.

“It just cannot go on unpunished, and we look for the international community to really stand up and say ‘enough is enough’,” Ibrahim said.

That could involve imposing sanctions on officials involved in the killing of protesters and more media coverage of the protests and the violence unfolding.

In 2017, the United States lifted long-standing sanctions against Sudan following months of diplomacy in a bid to boost the economy.

Ibrahim expressed doubt, however, that pursuing charges against Bashir in the International Criminal Court was the best course of action, suggesting instead that abandoning that route could entice Bashir to prevent further violence and deaths.

Room for optimism

Despite unrest in his home country, Ibrahim sees reasons for optimism in governance across Africa.

“There is a lot of positive things happening,” he said. “In Angola, in Botswana, in Namibia, in Ghana — I would hope in Nigeria.”

Each of these countries has, in the past five years, held successful elections or seen the peaceful transfer of power. Nigerians will head to the polls again in February.

“The battle now is moving towards peaceful elections, more transparency. I am optimistic, and I think we are moving forward — unfortunately not in my country.”

Ibrahim’s foundation, established in 2006, seeks to promote good leadership and governance in Africa through an annual index of governance, a cash prize for noteworthy achievements in leadership and other initiatives. (VOA)

Sudan Police Deploy in Large Numbers ahead of Fresh Protests

KHARTOUM, LELEMUKU.COM - Sudanese security forces were deploying in large numbers on Sunday in Khartoum and the capital's twin city in anticipation of fresh protests calling on longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir to step down, according to activists and video clips circulating online.

The videos show hundreds of security forces in all-terrain vehicles in Khartoum and heading to nearby Omdurman, a traditional hotbed of dissent that saw hours of pitched battles between police and protesters last week.

Sunday's anticipated protests come amid a series of strikes, already underway or planned for this week, by professional unions, including doctors, teachers, lawyers and pharmacists. Demonstrations are also expected in other cities on Sunday.

Al-Bashir, who seized power in a military coup nearly 30 years ago, insists there will be no change of leadership except through the ballot box. Already one of the longest serving leaders in the region, he is expected to run for a new term in office in elections next year.

An Islamist wanted for genocide by the International Criminal Court, al-Bashir has repeatedly warned that the protests could plunge Sudan into the kind of chaos convulsing other countries in the region.

The protests erupted Dec. 19, initially over price hikes and shortages, but soon shifted to calling on the president to step down. Rights groups last week said at least 40 people have been killed in the protests, while the government acknowledged 24 deaths.

Activists say three protesters, including a doctor and a child, were killed in Thursday's clashes, but a police spokesman said the next day that only two were killed. He denied that security forces used live ammunition. Five doctors have died in the protests, according to the independent physicians union.

Although participants have so far been in the hundreds or low thousands, the continuing protests and strikes pose a challenge to al-Bashir's rule. The absence of explicit support by Sudan's Arab allies has made al-Bashir's position even more tenuous.

However, the protests show a lack of clear leadership and their continuation could invite another military takeover. Union leaders say they want a transitional government of technocrats followed by free elections.

Al-Bashir's position was further weakened when a senior cleric revealed that he and fellow clerics have implicitly suggested to the Sudanese leader in a meeting that he step down, arguing that Islam takes precedence over individuals.

In a surprise disclosure in a Friday sermon, Sheikh Abdul-Hay Youssef said the clerics presented al-Bashir with a list of demands, including an end to corruption, bringing to justice anyone found responsible for the latest economic crisis and an end to the killing of protesters, something that the Sudanese leader has sought to justify on religious grounds. (VOA)

Sudanese Protesters Dispersed After Week of Rallies

KHARTOUM, LELEMUKU.COM - At least three Sudanese protesters were wounded by gunshots Tuesday when security forces dispersed rallies in the capital, witnesses said, after a week of demonstrations against President Omar al-Bashir's three-decade rule.

A witness said security forces barred protesters at one location in Khartoum from marching on the presidential palace by firing tear gas and shots in the air.

Three witnesses told Reuters that three protesters had been wounded by gunshots, one of them in the head.

A police spokesman was not available to comment.

Officials have previously said the security forces exercised restraint and dealt with the protesters in a "civilized manner."

Officials and witnesses previously said at least 12 people hadbeen killed in the unrest so far. Amnesty International said Tuesday that at least 37 people had died.

Economic bind

Rising prices, shortages of basic commodities and a cash crisis have driven protesters to the streets across Sudan to demonstrate against al-Bashir, who took power in a military coup backed by Islamists in 1989.

Protesters, whogathered at several locations across Khartoum on Tuesday to march on the palace, have previously targeted offices of the ruling party, torching several of them.

Al-Bashir, one of the longest-serving rulers in Africa and the Middle East, told a rally in central Jazeera state on Tuesday that people who had destroyed institutions and burned public property were "traitors" and "mercenaries."

Three witnesses, one of them a doctor who has been offering medical support to the protesters, said three people were wounded by bullets.

"Three guys were shot next to me — one in the neck, one in the chestand one in the head," one of the witnesses said by telephone, asking not to identified.

Since the demonstrations started spreading on Dec. 19, police have dispersed protesters with tear gas and sometimes used live ammunition, residents say.

The authorities have shuttered schools and declared curfews and a state of emergency in several regions.

Journalists at the daily Al-Sudanisaid one of their colleagues was beaten by security forces after protesters passed next to the independent newspaper's offices. (VOA)

Clashes Erupt in Khartoum as Sudanese March on Presidential Palace

KHARTOUM, LELEMUKU.COM - Clashes erupted Tuesday in the Sudanese capital between police and thousands of protesters attempting to march on the presidential palace to demand that President Omar Bashir step down, according to activists and video clips posted online.

The clips purported to show crowds of several hundred each gathering on side roads and headed toward the palace on the bank of the Blue Nile in the heart of Khartoum. They sang patriotic songs and chanted "Peaceful, peaceful against the thieves" and "The people want to bring down the regime." The latter was the most popular slogan of the 2010 and 2011 Arab Spring revolts.

Large numbers of security forces were deployed across much of Khartoum Tuesday in anticipation of the march, with soldiers riding in all-terrain vehicles. Police used tear gas to disperse some of the protesters.

The protest was called by an umbrella of independent professional unions and supported by the country's largest political parties, the Umma and Democratic Nationalist. The organizers want to submit a petition demanding that Bashir, in power for 29 years, step down.

Tuesday's march follows nearly a week of protests initially sparked by rising prices and shortages of food and fuel, but which later escalated into calls for Bashir to go. The Sudanese leader was in the al-Jazeera region south of Khartoum on a previously scheduled visit Tuesday. Live TV coverage showed him addressing supporters there.

The petition presented by the protesters demands that he hand over power to a "transitional government of technocrats with a defined mandate agreed upon by all segments of the Sudanese society."

"We are asserting that we will continue to exercise all popular and peaceful options, including general strike and civil disobedience, to bring down the regime," it said.

The march followed a joint statement Monday night by the United States, Britain, Norway and Canada, which said they were concerned by "credible reports" that Sudan's security forces have used live ammunition against demonstrators.

They urged all parties to avoid violence or the destruction of property while affirming the right of the Sudanese people to peacefully protest to express their "legitimate grievances."

The London-based rights group Amnesty International meanwhile said it had "credible reports" that Sudanese police have killed 37 protesters in clashes during the anti-government demonstrations.

An opposition leader said over the weekend that 22 protesters were killed. The government has acknowledged fatalities without providing any figures.

The military vowed Sunday to rally behind Bashir and emphasized in a statement that it was operating in harmony with the police and Sudan's feared security agencies.

Bashir on Monday said his government would introduce measures to remedy the economy and ``provide citizens with a dignified life.'' He also warned citizens against what he called "rumor mongers."

The protests over the past week have been met with a heavy security crackdown, with authorities arresting more than a dozen opposition leaders, suspending school and university classes, and imposing emergency rule or nighttime curfews in several cities. There has also been a near-total news blackout on the protests.

Bashir, in his mid-70s, seized power in a 1989 military coup that overthrew an elected but ineffective government. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court for committing crimes against humanity and genocide in the western Darfur region.

Bashir has ordered the use of force against protesters in the past— including in the last round of unrest in January— successfully crushing them to remain one of the longest-serving leaders in the region. Although his time in power has seen one crisis after another, he is seeking a new term in office, with loyal lawmakers campaigning for constitutional amendments that would allow him to run in the 2020 election.

Sudan lost three quarters of its oil wealth when the mainly animist and Christian south seceded in 2011 after a long and ruinous civil war against the mainly Muslim and Arabized north. More recently, a currency devaluation caused prices to surge and a liquidity crunch forced the government to limit bank withdrawals, leading to long lines outside ATMs. (VOA)