Sudan – Collective Punishment
Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) expressed its deep concern over the arbitrary arrest campaigns carried out by the Sudanese authorities against its dissidents, given the already deteriorating human rights situation in the country.
The arrests come as protests erupted in different cities in Sudan due to the harsh living conditions and the government’s inability to provide the basic daily needs for its citizens.
Over the last two days, mass arbitrary arrests were carried out based on the decision of the Empowerment Removal Committee (ERC) last Thursday.
The ERC issued a circular to state governors and state empowerment removal committees to take criminal measures issued by the Public Prosecution, against figures of the National Congress and its active cadres in centers and states, providing that they should be dealt with under Articles 13 and 14 of the Disassembly Law, Articles 35, 36 and 37 of the Anti-Terrorism and Money Laundering Law of 2014, and Articles 50 and 51 of the 1991 Criminal Law, amended on 2020.
This decision forms a flagrant violation of the law, and an attempt to legitimise repression and breaching of the law.
According to the testimony of a lawyer; the Public Prosecution issued arrest warrants against 56 persons, 12 of whom were arrested, including the Vice President of the National Congress in the states Abdul Qadir Muhammad Ali, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Gadarif University, Dr. Jamal Khaled, Dr. Hassabo Mohamed Abdulrahman, Vice President the former Republic, the journalist Hussein Khojaly Abdul Ilah, owner of the Omdurman Satellite Channel, Alwan Newspaper and Al Masaa Radio, as well as Dawood Mohamed Ali, Hassan Jaafar, Mohamed Abdel Fadeel Al-Sunni, Abu Bakr Daj, Mahjoub Mohamed Nour, Sheikh Ali Mahmoud, Alameddine Yahya, Awad Shaweesh, and Jihad Al-Barir.
All detainees were prevented from taking their basic needs such as clothes and medicine.
The detainees include elderly people who suffer serious health conditions and need special care which are not available in detention centers, such as Dr. Hassabo Mohamed Abdelrahman, who suffers from high blood pressure and severe lung inflammation, and the journalist Hussein Khojaly Abdul Ilah, who is over 70 and suffers from loss of eyesight in one of the eyes, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart and arteries failure, Dawood Mohamed Ali and Hassan Jaafar who suffer from diabetes, Abdul Qadir and Mohamed Ali, 70, Abu Bakr Douj, and Jamal Khaled, all of whom suffer from diabetes and high blood pressure.
Following the Sudanese revolution, Sudan witnessed a significant increase in arbitrary arrests and illegal detention, as well as attempts to legitimize the violations committed by the Sudanese authorities via faulty laws in breach of the Sudanese Constitution and the relevant international conventions.
All the arrests of political activists, journalists, intellectuals and politicians, are part of a huge human rights crisis in Sudan, where freedom of opinion and expression became a crime, and opponents are arrested, dismissed from their jobs and their money confiscated.
AOHR UK called on the international community, the African Union and the United Nations to take a serious stance against the current wave of arrests against political opponents and depriving them of their right to a fair trial, ensuring the full adherence of Sudan to its human rights obligations, and abolishing all decisions and laws enacted to punish a group of citizens for having opposing opinions to that of the government.
