Weekly Press Columns Digest
16 May, 2021
KHARTOUM (Sudanow) - The week’s press have carried a lot of commentaries and opinion articles on the country’s hot issues. Hereunder Sudanow publishes articles on the most pressing and the most widely hyped issues by the media. Those were:
The use of live ammunition to disperse thousands of youths and families who gathered in the neighborhood of the Army General Command to commemorate the lives lost in the brutal breaking of the protesters sit-in around the Army General Command in June 2019.
The second issue was the announcement by Ahmed Haroon, one of several government officials officially indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes in Darfur, that he was willing to go for trial in the Hague.
The third issue was an initiative by the group “The Society’s Wise Men” to correct the path of the December 2018-April 2019 Revolution:
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Writing in the electronic publication Alrakooba (the Shack), writer and filmmaker Wajdi Kamil has lambasted the Sudanese military on the killing of two young men and the wounding of several others who were peacefully commemorating the anniversary of those killed in the breaking two years ago of the protesters sit-in around the Army General Command:
What happened after the Tuesday Ramadan breakfast event, called for by the families of those killed in the December Revolution, is a new hateful incident that joins previous historical occurrences which show the military’s betrayal of the people of Sudan.
This time and place when and where the incident took place tell everything about who to blame: There were no other military forces or armed militias at the place other than the Army personnel on duty in the area. There is no room for fraud here. It was the Army personnel who opened fire on the congregation of male and female protesters and the martyrs’ families. Bullets were not fired in the air, but directly at the bodies of the protesters. The assailants had sniped the protesters in cold blood.
This bloody incident gives a number of messages which show that the transition to democratic rule is at risk.
The first of those messages tells that the Armed Forces, with its present set up and combat doctrine is not eligible to join the peace process or merge with the other armed groups to form what can be called the national army. That is because the army that opens fire at its own people factually sees in the Sudanese people a strategic enemy, forgetting the fact that it is the same people from which there emerged the movements of armed struggle and the other political and civil forces that made the revolution. What had taken place would not have happened if there had not existed permissions and orders from above to open fire.
The second message explains the disrespect of the military of any other political bodies that participate with it in the transitional process. When the Army opens fire on the citizens, it is, without any doubt, an opening of fire on the transitional government. It is a sharp and a blatant embarrassing of the entirety of the political forces, exposing them to the heat of criticism and defamation from the revolution’s masses.
The third message is an indication that the opening of fire is part of political agendas hostile to the revolution and change. Here the accusing finger must surely be pointed towards the defunct regime and its cadres in the Army, soldiers and medium ranks, as part of the daily increasing political hurdles put in the way of the revolution, its demands and objectives.
The fourth message is related to the endeavors to weaken the public morale, hit the moral spirit of the revolutionaries and create sedition between them and the civilian government, foremost the Prime Minister and, may be a call for his resignation, if not pushing him to resign.
The relation is now shaky between the components of the government. Doubts are about to go towards the political decency of the Armed Forces whose leaderships clearly gear towards a singlehanded taking of power and doing wrong to the civilians, by marginalizing their role, putting them in a harsh corner and portraying them as the weakest party in the government.
The forces of the revolution have a difficult job to do. The most important element in this job is the removal of the Islamists and members of the defunct National Congress Party from the military, security, police, civil service institutions and from the judicial system. True revolutionary barristers, with proven dedication to the revolution and its objectives, should take over in the judicial system and get rid of the hateful legacy of the defunct regime in the instruments of justice.
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Mr. Osman Mohammad Hassan, writing in the electronic publication Sudanile, has commented on the recent revelation by Mr. Ahmed Haroon, a former Minister of the Interior that he was willing to stand trial before the International Criminal Court (ICC) that had earlier indicted him for war crimes in Darfur:
Ahmed Haroon’s call for himself to be extradited to the ICC has caused a big uproar. Some people think Haroon is envious of the life of luxury being lead by another accused (Ali Koshaib) who is now on trial before the ICC in the Hague after he was apprehended in his hiding place in the Central African Republic.
Some also think Haroon is blackmailing chairman of the Sovereignty Council, General Burhan and his deputy General Dagalo (Hemaidti). Views continue to conflict on the matter.
What matters here is that Koshaib was in charge of recruiting and arming the Janjaweed militia with the sums and logistics secured to him by Haroon.
Haroon had used to plan the attacks on civilians. It was he who gave the orders for genocidal attacks in general. We remember seeing T.V footages of him giving orders to the troops: “sweep, raze, clean up and don’t bring him alive!”.
Koshaib’s job was to carry out Haroon’s plans to sweep the villages and wipe them out of the map, and kill all who happens to be on the road. No one should be spared, even if he happens to surrender.
In March 2007, that is two months before the ICC arrest warrant for Haroon, the Swiss newspaper Swissinfo had conducted an interview with the ICC Prosecutor Mr. Luis Moreno Ocampo in which he said the most to blame for the violence in Darfur at that time were Interior Minister Ahmed Mohammad Haroon and the Janjaweed Commander Ali Koshaib.
The two face 51 charges for crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing. Regardless of the crimes Haroon had committed in Darfur, we say to him: Take it easy, Haroon. Nobody will surrender you to the ICC. And nobody will try you before a Sudanese court that respects the law. For the law has travelled outside the Sudan, just like the multitudinous Sudanese scattered in the countries of the globe. All those who have real authority in Sudan now are involved with you from the top down to the bottom. They are all in the loop with you!
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There is a general call now for the forces of the revolution to go back to where they have started and reestablish the principles and guidelines for revolutionary work and the building of democracy and civilian rule. The call is prompted by the fact that some entities in the Forces For Freedom and Change (FFC) that started and led the revolution against Bashir’s rule are disgruntled, with some of them disengaging themselves from the rest whom they accuse of succumbing to the will of the military.
A move to reunite these forces is now taken under the title “A return to the Platform Where the FFC Was Established.”
Commenting on this issue, Mr. Mohammad Ateeg, has written in the Paris-based Sudantribune that:
The group for the return to the founding platform of the FFC that showed itself by our big master, Mr. Mahjoub Mohammad Salih, had two weeks ago issued a three -page worthwhile paper it called “The Return Charter” which was signed by 43 political parties and civil society organizations. The Return Charter in this sense is the program agreed upon by all those forces as a basis for a return to the initial platform, the original preoccupations of the revolution, its logjams, horizons for its revival along the resolve of its beginnings, the smell of sweat, the tears and the blood let within the revolution’s corridors.
There should be an agreement of all the political and civil society groups upon an all-embracing central bureau with a rotational leadership and an executive bureau with specialized secretariats. This can create a situation where all can find themselves as policy makers and implementers. That is the best way to start, the way all the patriotic parties (journalists, writers and organizations) had used to call for.
I would also like to add here (and in order to rearrange these objectives) the need for the quick formation of the transitional legislative council that embraces all the true forces of the revolution from political parties, organizations, women and youth groupings, resistance committees and persons with special needs which should be supported by distinct partisan leaderships and cadres with experience and capabilities all along the ratios specified in the Constitutional Document.
The transitional legislative council, by this definition, should seek to restore the revolutionary legitimacy with the creation of a strong integrative judicial set up which is capable of facing the most pressing issues of:
1/ Investigating corruption, tyranny and deviations of the symbols of the ousted regime.
2/ Purging the Constitutional Document from all impurities and ridding it from all the violations and misrepresentations it suffered.
3/ Revising the laws and decisions taken by the present government, in particular those regarding the procedures taken to normalize relations with Israel and also the recently adopted investment law.
4/ Challenging the deteriorating economic situation and the austerity the public is facing as regards its livelihoods, with respect to the availability of commodities and their prices.
5/ Revising the Juba Peace Accord concluded between the Government and the Sudanese Revolutionary Front that gave supremacy of that Accord over the Constitutional Document. This revision should also annul the Transitional Period’s Partners Council and should cater for the opening of the Juba Peace Accord to accommodate the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (Alhilu) and the Sudan Liberation Movement (Noor)
END
YH/AS
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