Report on Human rights Violations in Darfur 1998

During the last fifteen years the region of Darfur has suffered from drought and other cruelties of Nature. But since the National Islamic Front (N.I.F) came to power,
Darfur has experienced another kind of suffering, which the rest of Sudan has not.
Darfur has its share of the general problems of the Sudan, as well as its own specific problems. These problems have resulted , without a shadow of a doubt, from the
policies of the Regime. These policies include repressing, humiliating and maltreating people, so that citizens in Darfur are powerless. They are without any rights; they are
completely shattered.

The Government has practised the policy of ‘starve your dog, and it will follow you’ with the citizens of Darfur. People lack the very means of life, such as drinking water, food and medical treatment. In short, they lack every service crucial for human existence. This is the reality of day-to-day life despite the promises which all the administrators made personally during their rare visits to Darfur. The promises have all disappeared into the wind. The administrators have left nothing behind them except the debts, which have resulted from luxurious spending involved in their visits. The Wilaya, the council of the region, has paid all of these debts using the food of the people of Darfur. For example, the cost of the President’s visit to the region which took place in April 1994 was 18 million Sudanese pounds. (This figure appeared in the budget published by the Wilaya).

Darfur has had bitter experiences as a result of the action of the Regime. These have
included tribal wars, continuous strife and armed robbery, which is likely to be
organised most of the time.When one considers Darfur in terms of geography and demography, the possibility of the emergence of tribal conflict at anytime becomes immediately apparent. This is because of the meshing of different tribal territories, such as in the area of Eldeian, where tribes such as the El-Taiesha and the El-Riziqat live, as well as other tribes such as the El-Zaghawa. Conflicts arose in the years 1992, 1993 and 1996, 1998 and claimed very many innocent lives. Meanwhile the Regime did nothing to help the incidents and its intervention usually came only after the loss of lives, at the end of the entanglement.

Not only this; the Regime clearly sided with one tribe rather than the other. For example, this happened during events in Eldein, in 1996, when the Regime sided with
the Arabic tribes, leaving the El-Zaghawa tribe massacred under its nose. In 1991 the area of Kharzan Jadid witnessed tribal strife between El-Zaghawa and El-Miga and El-Fur and some Arabic tribes. Very many innocent women and children were killed. In April 1998 people were attacked by an unknown group of people whilst praying in the mosque. The unknown group was apparently supported by the Regime.Thirty-five people were killed in that attack. Amongst those who were killed were Ishaq Abdella, Abdel-Rahman, Adam Khatir, Abdel Rahman, Ali Abdella Ishaq, Hamid Ibrahim Mursal and Dawud Ibrahim Wadi. Many people were injured, and they were taken to the clinic, which is poorly equipped. They did not receive proper medical care.
A tribal war broke out in the area of Wada’a (South East El-Fashir) in March 1991.
Strangely, the weapons used were modern ones, some of them automatic,with far-reaching machine guns and even missiles. This proves the involvement of the Regime in this war, and proves that it provides the tribes engaged in fighting with deadly weapons. More than 250 people were killed, amongst them women, children and the elderly. Some of them were killed when attacked whilst they were in the mosque.Survivors of the incident remember it well. The forces of the ruling Regime repress any sign of protest or resentment made against the worsening economic and political situation. This repression takes place under the guise of ‘preventing a tribal war’. This happened, for example, in 1996 in El-Jinaina, when the Regime imposed high taxes on animals, to be paid by the tribes of El-Fur and El-Musalit.
The mayors and sheikhs of these tribes refused to pay the taxes, and wrote letters to the government asking them to reduce them. The government’s response was to incite Arab tribes in the area to fight the tribes of El-Fur and El-Musalit.

A fierce tribal war broke out, which claimed many lives on both sides. The partiality and the involvement of the Regime was apparent, as it was in the incidents of Wada’ and El-Di’ain. The areas of Sheiryya, Arqid, Mavarit (South and East El-Fashir) and Natiqa (East Nyala) had witnessed bazaar incidents. The incidents were a mixture of spurious tribal conflicts and attacks made by armed individuals. The Regime’s forces intervened not so as to resolve the conflict, but so as to cause more casualties. For example they burnt many villages, supposedly to punish the perpetrators. This lead to losses of crops. Typically. this is what happened in the area of Khazan Jadid in 1990, when the so-called police and the army forces burnt more than twenty villages in the area of El-Zaghawa. In 1997 in the area of Midob (north of El-Fashir and Mallit) an army patrol attacked the women of a village, taking all of their gold from them, claiming that it had been stolen. In response, some members of the El-Midob tribe attacked and killed the eighteen members of the army patrol, while the latter were in two Landcruisers. The army then made random arrests amongst the youth of the El-Midob tribe. They subjected them to torture and they did not release them until lawyers had intervened. Another bazaar incident happened in El-Fashir, when members of the General Security confiscated barrels of fuel (gasoline) from some citizens who had bought it from the Malleet Market. There was a shortage of fuel at that time. The Security Officers arrested them. They flogged, tortured and insulted them. They did not release them until the intervention of the Chamber of Commerce, which refuted the argument of the Security Forces, who had claimed that the detainees should have had licences for imports and exports.

Travelling to Libya along the route from Malleet El-Kafra does not usually require a
visa, apart from an exit permit, usually given by the police at Malleet. Despite this,
some members of the General Security and Economic Security ran into thirty-five
citizens who were on their way to Libya for ordinary visits. They took them out of their cars and tore up their travel permits that had been given to them by the Malleet
police. They were flogged; given fifty lashes each, and detained for three days in
different locations in El-Fashir. After that they were taken to court in El-Fashir. They
were charged with unlawful entry. They were tried before the notorious Judge
Barud, who is known to be a member of the ruling party. No defence lawyer was
allowed into the court. They were sentenced to forty lashes and fined twenty thousand
Sudanese pounds each.
El-Fashir University witnessed, as the other universities in Sudan, many incidents of
attacks on students by Security men. Many students have been subjected to tyrannical
dismissal, in accordance with university regulations. The regulations prohibited any
students from practising any activity in the university unless given permission from the
union, which is controlled by the N.I.F. and Security members. In the students elections of 1998, a students was addressing the other students, revealing the practices of the N.I.F and the its treatment of students. He was persuaded to leave the university, and he was taken by car to a remote area to the east of El-Fashir airport. They stabbed him with a jack knife several times, with the intention of murdering him. They left him there lying bleeding, on the edge of death. A soldier who was passing by on his way to the building of the Department of Agricultural Research reported that he was there. He was taken to hospital in a critical condition. After that he was taken to Khartoum. After he recovered, his application to return to El-Fashir was rejected. (He was told that he would need a permit to return to El-Fashir; this is an unusual procedure). It is believed that he was not allowed to return to El-Fashir because he would recognise his attackers.

On the 20th of June 1998 the Security officers arrested Isam Ali Salih and Mohammed
Ahmed Mukhtar, who are residents of the area. After they were tied up with ropes they were then flogged for four days, after the Security had confiscated two boxes of the medicine ‘Benciline’ from them. They had brought the medicine from Libya. The
Security forces threatened them not to tell anyone that they had had the medicine taken
from them. They did not provide any papers stating that the medicines had been
confiscated. The Security Forces also carried out mass arrests of labourers in the area of El-Hawashi, after Security personnel were attacked on the road from Kabkabia to El- Fashir. He was attacked and his belongings were destroyed (this included his television, medicines and other items). This incident took place outside El-Fashir, and it should have been dealt with through the normal procedures. Instead of this, the Security Forces, acting jointly with the police, arrested about eighty workers from the area of El-Hawashi. They were bullied and insulted. Some were threatened with the withdrawal of their licenses if they refused to give the names of the attackers; they had, in fact, had nothing to do with the attack, or with the attackers. The Security gave no justification for their actions.

The people of Darfur are subjected to insults and ill-treatment at the check points (the
Gates) on their way to and from the villages and cities of the region. Sometimes they
are subjected to random arrests. The arrests usually involve opponents of the
Regime, who are subjected to all kinds of bullying. So the check points have become as if they are borders between different countries: points of stoppage and arrest.

In 1997 in another episode of the series of repressions, a citizen called Abu El-Qasim
El-Haj Muhammed addressed the prayer meeting in the El-Fashir Grand Mosque. After
the Friday prayer he criticised the Regime, especially the government ministries and
departments, and its injustice towards the people. He gave evidence supporting his
points, and quoted the Prophet Muhammed Hadith on the devastating consequences of
injustices to society. Muhammed Uthman, who was then the Minister of Agriculture, and the Deputy Governor, was in the mosque and ordered him to be silent. He continued, accusing the minister of treason. Muhammed Hadith was arrested that night. He was flogged, insulted and threatened, and ordered to sign an undertaking that disallowed him from addressing any people at anytime, anywhere. He was only released after the intervention of the Committee of the Grand Mosque, headed by Sheikh Abdel-Latif. A stormy confrontation took place between the Committee, Security and the Minister. The incident lead to a continuation of the series of arrests. A week later, in an unprecedented event, the Security summoned more than one hundred people who were residents of El-Fashir. Among them were clerics, teachers and merchants. They were interrogated and threatened in the Security Offices. They tried to establish dossiers for them.

Testimony by the Sudanese citizen Azhari Muhammed Ali Abu-Sim

I used to be a student in the Faculty of Commerce, at the University of Alexandria,
Egypt, where more than 20, 000 Sudanese students study and where there is a fierce
political struggle on the part of all of the political parties embodied in the National
Democratic Alliance (N.D.A.). All parties were struggling against the National Islamic
Front. (N.I.F.) I spontaneously joined this fight because, as I believed and still do, that struggling against the N.I.F is a duty. We fought back when they attached some students: Atif Abu-Auf, Isam Fillini, Al-Aqraa, Isam El-Sibaee, and Arman. We succeeded in uprooting them from all of the unions after we defeated them in the elections in 1984. I returned to the Sudan in 1988, after taking my final exams. When the results came out, it seemed that I would have to re-sit some exams. However, due to financial reasons, I could not go to Egypt. That was a direct result of the worsening political and economic situation in Sudan, especially in Darfur, the place of my permanent residency. So I postponed my stay in Egypt, but planned to go there for the academic year of 1992-1993.
The situation in Darfur kept on deteriorating, as in the rest of Sudan, because of the
high taxes imposed by the Government, which the citizens were unable to cope with.
The taxes included different kinds of Zakat, and the so-called ‘Fund of El-Wilayya’ (the region) and the Fund of the Western Inqaz (Salvation) Road, which barely exists. Apart from that, donations and fines were imposed on poor people. The so-called Forces of Economic Security began confiscating the belongings and the savings and their corp?? They justified it by saying that it was for the fund of the El-Mujahid provisions. Epidemics broke out as a result of malnutrition and lack of medicines. Malaria took people’s lives. Armed robbery became a part of daily life. It extended from north to south Darfur and claimed many innocent lives. Tribal wars, fuelled by the Regime, broke out. The involvement of the Regime was obvious in places like Wada’a (North Darfur), where the regime was providing both parties with weapons and ammunition, and where even missiles were used. This also happened in El-Jinaina (west El-Fashir), where a tribal conflict claimed more than 3,500 lives of the tribesmen of Arabs, Masaleet and Fur. The mood of resentment was obvious. The Security men made a desperate attempt to control it. Anti-government slogans were written on walls, such as at the El-Fashir School for Girls, the hospital and the Cultural Centre. The slogans called for the overthrow of the Government.

The citizens decided to take to the streets to protest against the Government, and to
hand over a memorandum protesting against the Government’s policies and the security practices against people. A march was decided upon for the 16th of
February 1993. I was in my house on the eve of the march , which is located nearby the Cultural Centre in Al-Fashir. I was one of the assigned leaders of the march. At 3.00 am I heard knocks on the door. I opened it thinking that it was one of my colleagues with a message for me. When I asked : "Who is it?’’ the answer came back ‘’Open up; it is the Security’’. When I opened the door, I found seven of them, masked, with machine guns and torches. They asked me who else was in the house; I answered no one. Two of them dashed into the sitting room where there were two cupboards. One of them was full of books and magazines. They began searching it, while a third man began interrogating me: ‘’You conduct meetings here, don’t you? Who attends these meetings? We know that you are Communists and Ba’athist.’’ They found a communique in the cupboard. They used it as a pretext: ‘’We want you’’. I got dressed and went with them. Two of them were in the yard of the house, the other two were near the door. We went out. They had parked their car about ten metres away from the house. I found Muhammed Ibrahim Bakhit, a colleague of mine, in the car. He had already been arrested.

At that time Abdel-Rahman Muhammed Ali Abu-Sim, my brother, was on a mission in Khartoum for the UNDP, the organisation for which he works. When we reached their
den, which is located in the east of Darfur High School (East El-Fashir), one of them shouted: ‘’Get down! We have a show with you tonight!” They began interrogating us
separately. They began saying that they knew everything, and that they knew about the march. They accused us of writing the slogans on the walls. My interrogator was
Major General Muhammed El-Khidir. He said to me that I should tell him about the people who attended meetings with us, and should give him our writing tools, as well as telling him who had been involved in producing the writings with us. If I did not, he said, they would torture us. Of course, our answers were negative. We disassociated ourselves from any writings or demonstrations, from inciting people to demonstrate or to disobey the Government.They began whipping us immediately. I was flogged more than twenty lashes. One of the men, Captain Hashim, hit me with a thick plastic pipe on the left hand side of my forehead. They prevented us from sleeping that night and until 12.00pm the next day, when they began interrogating us again. The interrogator was Muhammed Joada, who I found out later was originally from Babanusa. He ordered us to stand in the sun, with our hands up, for six hours. After that we were thrown in a very dirty toilet for ten days.

We were only allowed out of it for prayers, and sometimes for meals, which were composed exclusively of fava beans. During the time that I was there Muhhamed Abu-
Sim, my relative, used to bring me food, but they told him that they were not detaining anyone by my name. On the fourth day another two men were thrown with us into the toilet: Abdel-Mu’im Awad El-Karim and Bahaa El-Din Yousuf Salih. The place was then overcrowded. They kept on torturing us by making us stand directly in the sun; by kicking us in the testicles; by forcing us to bend down, turning oneself around while holding one’s right ear with the left hand. We were forced to do this until we became dizzy and fell down. They call the latter method of torture “The oozo seller” (Sit El-Araqi). We were also tortured by being forced to sit, while holding our toes, and keep jumping in this position for a long time. This causes enormous fatigue. We had to do what we were ordered to do immediately. For example, when Hashim said “Now do the Sit El-Araqi” we had to obey immediately, otherwise our backs were flogged. Hashim and Muhammed were the worst of them, and by far the most evil.
In the first ten days, when we were locked in the toilet, we were sweating constantly. A strange rash appeared on my left hand and my left foot, which was accompanied by
severe pain at the base of my back.