NEWS
CONTACT: Jimmy Mulla,
(202-360-9324) (jkmulla@gmail.com) For Immediate Release
ICC Arrest Warrant Long Overdue
WASHINGTON, D.C. March 16, 2009– Southern Sudanese Voice for Freedom (SSVF), a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization, welcomes the decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant for Omar El Bashir, Sudan’s sitting head of state.
“This is an historical legal step toward bringing the perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity to justice,” says SSVF president Jimmy Mulla, who adds that such a step is long overdue.
“The International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, established by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, actually reported to the U.N. in January of 2005 that there was reason to believe that crimes against humanity and war crimes had been committed in Darfur, and it recommended at that time that the situation be referred to the ICC.”
Mulla points out that for all but 11 of the 54 years since its independence in 1956, Sudan has been engulfed in civil conflict but none of the culprits were brought to justice. During the 22-year North-South conflict, more than 2.5 million people were killed, four million were internally displaced, and 1.5 million were forced into refugee camps in neighboring countries.
The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed between the Sudan People's Liberation Movement and the Government of Sudan in January 2005, was meant to end Sudan’s North-South civil war, be used as a model to end the conflict in Darfur, transform the country into a secular state, and develop democratic governance countrywide.
“Unfortunately, following the signing of the agreement, the country witnessed unprecedented escalation of violence in Darfur, perpetrated by Khartoum and government- sponsored ‘janjaweed’ militias,” Mulla explains.
SSVF urges the international community to rally behind the ICC decision, and not let the legal process be impeded by political agendas, such as those expressed by certain African and Arab leaders, including Russia and China.
“The time for justice in Sudan is now,” Mulla says, “and those who think arresting Bashir would lead to a derailing of either the CPA or a peace agreement in Darfur, are naïve and self-serving. The CPA provides clear directives for filling vacancies in high government positions. “ It is unfortunate that African and Arab nations are willing to sacrifice both peace and justice in Sudan. The way forward for a democratic, new Sudan is to hold everyone accountable for their actions, without exception. And that includes Bashir.” Mulla notes that some African leaders use the defunct Organization of African Union Charter as justification for defending international bodies against interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. “This rationale has been used by dictatorial regimes in African countries to suppress their own citizens,” Mulla says, “but with the establishment of the ICC prosecution of the former Yugoslavia’s Slobodan Milosovic, Liberia’s Charles Taylor, and perpetrators in the Rwanda genocide, it is time for African and Arab country leaders to recognize that this can no longer be used as excuse for committing mass murder. “The world is becoming a small village and those who have committed atrocities should be held accountable for their crimes, so the ICC needs to be strengthened to ensure that justice is served worldwide.”
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CONTACT: Jimmy Mulla For Immediate Release
(Phone 202-360-9324/E-mail-jkmulla@gmail.com)
Plight of Sudanese Refugees in Israel Revealed at D.C. Presentation
Washington, D.C. (February 17,2008) -- Southern Sudanese Voice for Freedom (SSVF), a Washington based advocacy group, presented its findings on the plight of Sudanese refugees in Israel at a panel discussion held February 11, 2009. The presentation – the first of its kind on this topic in the U.S. – addressed highlights of a fact-finding trip members of the SSVF took to Israel last spring. A complete printed report on that trip is forthcoming.
In 2008 there were 2,135 Sudanese asylum seekers registered in Israel, after encountering violence at the Sudan-Egyptian border while fleeing from Sudan’s brutal north-south civil war and genocide in Darfur. Until recently, Sudanese had been arrested upon arrival in Israel – largely because Sudan and Israel do not have diplomatic relations – charged with illegal entry, and put under detention for three months to three years. While some Sudanese now have temporary visas allowing them to work, and 600 refugees from Darfur have been given permanent residency with full citizenship rights, there is a proposed new law that would allow the detention of illegal entrants into Israel for up to seven years.
Israel attorney Tally Kritzman, currently a Hauser Research Scholar at New York University School of Law, pointed out that Israel reserves the right “not to absorb into Israel, or to grant a permit to enable the stay in Israel, of subjects of enemy or hostile states-as determined from time to time by the relevant authorities, and for as long as such states poses the status. The issue of release of such persons on bail will be examined on case-by-case basis, in accordance with the prevailing circumstances, and security considerations.”
Sudanese activist Simon Deng maintained that granting permanent status to a small number of refugees from Darfur, while denying status to the rest and excluding those from Southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains and other parts of Sudan, has brought division and misunderstanding among the refugee population in Israel.
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SSVF/Sudanese refugees in Israel/News Release 2-2-2
SSVF president Jimmy Mulla called on all signatories to the 1951 United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, to cooperate with the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) and to adhere to internationally recognized standards for the economic and social rights of refugees.
SSVF has already been instrumental in convincing 34 members of Congress to appeal directly to Egypt through diplomatic means to ensure humane practices toward immigrant and refugee populations at the Egyptian-Israeli border crossing.
Other organizations and government agencies represented at the February 11 presentation were USAID, Ant-Deformation League, Institute on Religion and Democracy, Hebrew Immigration and Aids Society, Beja Congress, the RFK Center for Human Rights, Nubia Project, and the Sudanese Workers Union.
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U.N. council to meet Africans, Arabs on Sudan's Bashir
By Louis Charbonneau
Reuters
Thursday, February 12, 2009; 2:02 PM
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - African Union and Arab League diplomats urged the U.N. Security Council on Thursday to suspend an expected war crimes indictment of the Sudanese president over atrocities in Darfur, diplomats said.
U.N. diplomats and officials said on Wednesday the International Criminal Court had decided to issue an arrest warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who is accused by the court's chief prosecutor of overseeing genocide in Darfur.
The court, based in The Hague, said on Thursday it had not reached a final decision but U.N. officials said the Sudanese government was already aware that Bashir would be formally indicted later this month.
"They (Arab and African diplomats) will meet with council members this afternoon and they will convey the decision of the African Union at the recent summit in Addis Ababa that they need to invoke Article 16," Sudan's U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem told reporters.
Article 16 of the ICC statute allows the Security Council to suspend ICC proceedings for up to one year at a time.
Abdalhaleem said African and Arab diplomats had already met some individual council members on Thursday, including U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice. However, a U.S. official said the meeting with Rice was not about the ICC.
Council diplomats said the meeting would be private and informal. One diplomat said it might be pushed back to Friday and was unlikely to result in any council action since the ICC has not issued any warrant.
Britain's Africa minister Mark Malloch Brown said earlier this week that it was "completely unlikely that anything is going to happen which could lead to an Article 16 deferral."
"NO ONE GIVES A DAMN"
Bashir is the most senior figure pursued by the court since it was set up in 2002. If the warrant is issued as expected, he will be the first acting head of state indicted.
Sudan rejects the accusations made by chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo last July and says it will never hand over Bashir or two other Sudanese men already indicted by the court.
"For us this so-called indictment doesn't exist," said Abdalhaleem. "No one will give it a damn in the country. If it has any merit, it has united the whole Sudanese people around our president."
China, the African Union and Arab League have all suggested that an indictment of Bashir could destabilize the region, worsen the Darfur conflict and threaten a troubled peace deal between north Sudan and the semi-autonomous south.
Ocampo accuses Bashir of orchestrating a campaign of genocide in Sudan's western Darfur region, starting in 2003. Ocampo has said this killed 35,000 people outright and at least 100,000 more through starvation and disease.
Khartoum rejects the term genocide and says 10,000 people died in the conflict.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Heavens in Khartoum, Skye Wheeler in Juba, South Sudan and Catherine Hornby in Amsterdam)
(Editing by Alan Elsner)
Sudan hands over rebel observers to Darfur peacekeepers
The Sudanese army on Thursday, Jan. 17, handed over to UN and African Union peacekeepers seven representatives of Darfur rebels who were seized last month from an African Union base. "The seven men were handed over to General Martin Agwai, commander of UNAMID forces, in the presence of chief of mission Rodolphe Adada," United Nations African Mission in Darfur spokesman Noureddine Mezni told AFP. Read more.