George OT) Here's the World's Number One Human Rights Disaster, which the UN and everyone else (except the Scandanavians-God Bless them!) have blithely ignored....Actually Dr. Garang was polite to the NIF Military Junta Leadership in this UN speech - he did not mention that Iraq and Sudan are busy building a number of chemical weapons plants in the Sudan....
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News Article by UNHR on March 27, 1999 at 16:11:19:
ADDRESS TO THE UNITED NATIONS HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION BY DR. JOHN GARANG, CHAIRMAN, SPLM and C-IN-C, SPLA
GENEVA: MARCH 24, 1999
1. My name, Madam Chairperson, is John Garang. I am the Chairman of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM) and Commander-in-Chief of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), and am a member of the Leadership Council of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and Chairman of the NDA
Joint Military Command.
I am grateful to Christian Solidarity International (CSI) for
giving me the opportunity to represent the marginalized and severely
persecuted people of Sudan at the United Nations High commission for Human Rights, which should be a forum for the human rights of all peoples.
Madam Chairperson, the war waged by the present (NIF) regime in
Khartoum has left 1.9 million people dead and five million displaced. The genocidal character of this war, as manifested by Jihad, slavery and other gross human rights violations by the Government of Sudan (GOS), has been amply documented by Dr. Casper Biro, the former Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, and by Human Rights organizations such as SCI, African Rights and the United Nations Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), among others, and by
eminent individuals, such as Professors Ushari and Baldo of Khartoum
University. More Sudanese people have been killed by the (NIF) Government than in the Bosnian, Rwandan and Somalian wars combined.
My people, Madam chairperson, number amongst the most persecuted
and most disenfranchised peoples of the world. They have no voice
internationally, as the state which purports to represent them is in the
iron grip of a brutal religious sect, which, after repeated failures to
make headway in democratic elections, seized power in a military coup in 1989. This ugly rogue regime is at war against my people. The (NIF) regime is waging a war of genocide aimed at transforming the tolerant, multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-cultural Sudan into a totalitarian Arab-Islamist state.
By design the Khartoum (NIF) Regime creates famine conditions;
denies and manipulates humanitarian aid; bombs civilian targets, including churches, mosques, hospitals, schools and relief centres run by UN Operation Lifeline Sudan; torches villages; tortures and murders members of the democratic opposition; and sponsors the enslavement of thousands of women and children. These deeds, Madam Chairperson, are "crimes against humanity" according to all moral and international law, and for which the Khartoum regime must be condemned in this session of the UN Commission for Human Rights.
It is difficult for me to conceal the disappointment of my people
in the response of the international community to these grave human rights violations. The enslavement of Sudanese women and children and other crimes against humanity are met with silence by the very institutions that exist to defend human rights. Denial of life saving aid to women and children in the Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile, the Beja areas of North-Eastern Sudan and elsewhere is met with silence out of deference to the wishes of a regime that is committing genocide against the Sudanese people. No word of protest is uttered when the armed forces of the Government of Sudan blatantly violates the current UN-brokered cease-fire and destroys OLS/UNICEF and other feeding centres in famine-stricken Bahr El Ghazal.
As a result of this impotence on the part of the international
community to do anything about the despotic Regime in Khartoum, the NIF has held the UN/OLS relief organization hostage and has used relief food as a weapon against my people, knowing that they can get away with it. The use of humanitarian food relief as a weapon of war by the Khartoum (NIF) regime, or by the opposition, or its use by the international community as pressure in the peace process; all such political use of relief, Madam Chairperson, is immoral and a violation of human rights and must be condemned.
2. I want to ask this commission a very important question about a war
based on Jihad. In 1992 the Khartoum (NIF) regime declared "Jihad" against the people of Southern Sudan and Nuba Mountains. Since then Jihad has been declared again and again. Madam Chairperson: "Is a war based on Jihad, as is the case now in the Sudan, a religious right of those who declare and wage it, or is it a violation of the human rights of the people against whom it is declared and waged?
At the national (Sudanese) level, the SPLM is calling for an
Inter-Faith Dialogue Conference to be held in the New Sudan (Liberated Areas) to answer this question. The conference will bring together the New Sudan Council of Churches (NSCC), the New Sudan Islamic Council (NSIC), the Ansar Islamic Sect, which is associated with the UMMA Party, the Khatimiya Islamic Sect that is associated with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), various Sufi Islamic Orders and Traditional Africa Religious groups, so that this religious bodies, as civil society, openly discuss the relationship between religion and state and the meaning of the present (NIF) Jihad war, whether this "Jihad war" is a religious right of Muslims, or a crime against the people of Southern Sudan and Nuba Mountains against which it was declared and being waged?
At the international level, Madam Chairperson, I propose that an
international conference on Jihad be organized to address the issue of
whether waging a war based on Jihad, as obtains now in the Sudan, is a religious right of those waging it (the NIF Government), or whether its a violation of the human rights of the people against whom it is being waged (the people of Southern Sudan, the Nuba people of Southern Kordofan and the Fung people of Southern Blue Nile).
3. Madam Chairperson, the disenfranchised people of the New Sudan,
(that is, Southern Sudan, Southern Kordofan and Southern Blue Nile), have no voice at the United Nations, because the state which purports to represent them is in the grip of a totalitarian (NIF) regime that has declared a Jihad war on them. No wonder that the numerous human rights violations committed against my people are not sufficiently reported. In order to redress this situation and give my people a voice in international fora, I propose that the SPLM be given "Observer Status" at the United Nations. There is precedent, as organizations similar to the SPLM have been given "observer status" at the UN before, and so this would not be new.
4. I take this opportunity to appeal to Europe and the international
community to assist the New Sudan, (that is, the areas of Southern Sudan, Southern Kordofan and Southern Blue Nile that are under the administration of the SPLM), to achieve and nurture peace through development, irrespective of whether there is a peace agreement between the (NIF) regime and the New Sudan or not. Indeed, assisting the New Sudan with development can lead to peace by using development as a modality for peace making and
peace building, including programmes aimed at empowering civil society, capacity building, the establishment of a Civil Authority for the New Sudan, and promotion of transparent and good governance, as these measures will provide a conducive environment for economic development, freedom and peace.
5. Finally, Madam Chairperson, I would like to talk about peace for
the Sudan. A peaceful settlement of the Sudanese conflict has not been possible despite more than 15 rounds of peace talks between the (NIF) Government and the SPLM over the last 10 years. The obstacle to peace has always been the (NIF) regime that seeks to establish a totalitarian Islamist Arab state in the Sudan despite Sudan's manifest religious, ethnic and cultural diversity. The (NIF) Government position in all the peace talks has always been to insist on maintaining (Islamic) Sharia as the supreme law of the land, and obviously this has always been unacceptable to the SPLM, and hence the impasse in all the peace talks.
Given this stalemate in the peace process, the only logical way to
break the impasse and reach a peaceful and just settlement is to agree to confederal arrangements during an Interim Period, followed by the exercise of the right of self determination by the people of Southern Sudan and the other marginalized areas at the end of the Interim Period. The issue of the relationship between religion and state would therefore be handled separately in the respective (separate) constitutions of the two confederal states. This confederal solution would achieve "peaceful coexistence of two systems" with one Sudan (at least in the Interim Period), an (Islamic) theocratic state in the North by the free choice of the people of Northern
Sudan, and a non theocratic state in South Sudan, Southern Kordofan and Southern Blue Nile, that shall be an open democracy with freedom of religion to all religions and freedom of speech and association.
Madam Chairperson, the SPLM calls upon the UN and the international community to exert pressure on the Government of Sudan to save the people of Sudan from further unnecessary suffering by supporting this peace initiative, based on Confederation during an Interim Period to end the war and self determination at the end of the Interim period to find a permanent solution. Now is the time to end one of Africa's longest running civil wars through a peaceful and just settlement. Now is the time for the international community to implement the IGAD Declaration of Principles (DOPs). Now is the time for human rights and human dignity to be realized and institutionalized in the Sudan, and for all of humanity, as we enter the 21st Century. I thank you very much, Madam Chairperson and delegates to
this Commission.
Dr. John Garang de Mabior,
Chairman SPLM, and C-in-C, SPLA,
Member of NDA Leadership Council.
Geneva: March 24, 1999. |
