Kassala University Students in Need of Urgent Medical Assistance Following Clash with Regime

Khartoum—(October 23, 2011) On October 20, and for the third consecutive day, students in Kassala University protested the academic, economic and political situation in the country. They were met with excessive violence from the regime including live ammunition and tear gas. The worse came when a car (government Land Cruiser) ran over 8 students critically injuring four students, two of them are in urgent need of medical attention. The students are:

1. Abdulqadir Mohamed Adam (physics department): this student has been transported to Khartoum for medical attention.
2. Idrees Mohemed Ali (department of education): has suffered a fracture in his spinal cord and is grave danger. His critical situation has made it impossible to transport him by car to Khartoum due to the condition of the roads. He needs a helicopter in order to be transported to a Khartoum hospital.
3. Abdul al salam Osman Naseeb (department of economics): he has been released from hospital and his situation is stable after being treated from injuries.
4. Ahmed Hamid Qardiya (computer science department): has also been released from hospital and his situation is stable after being treated from injuries.

We call upon all humanitarian organizations and upon the Sudanese diaspora abroad to urgently mobilize efforts to get these students, who sacrificed their safety and lives to call for a life of dignity for all Sudanese, the necessary medical care they deserve and as soon as possible. As well as to publicize the atrocities and human rights violations committed against these civilians by the National Congress Party (NCP).

Moreover, there has been arrests of activists in Kassala and continued persecution of others by the NCP.

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I wanted to share that I wrote an op-ed piece entitled Sudan: the price of separation which was published yesterday in an Egyptian daily newspaper. It was also picked up by a number of online blogs/publications. Please feel free to comment on the article through any of the links below. Also, feel free to also share this with your own networks over email, facebook, twitter etc….

Pambazuka:

Sudan is currently sub-Saharan Africa’s third-largest oil producer, behind Nigeria and Angola, providing China alone with 30% of the oil that fuels its factories. And yet very little of Sudan’s oil profits have benefited its people. Instead, oil companies primarily from China and Malaysia have been providing the technology and infrastructure to explore, exploit and export the oil while sharing the profits with the elites in power. Khartoum’s regime is said to have siphoned off as much as 40% of total oil revenue through various forms of mis-pricing, essentially lining its pockets, instead of taking on the task of developing vast regions of the country that have been neglected and underdeveloped for decades.

When a regime driven by such greed loses its grip on power, it tends to tighten its grip before fully losing control. President Omar Al-Bashir’s latest remarks on the eve of this referendum, demonstrate this tendency quite poignantly. In the days leading up to the vote, he announced that were the South to secede, he would change the constitution in the North to impose Sharia law and ensure that Islam and Arabic are the official religion and language, respectively. In addition, he declared that the 1.5 million Southern Sudanese living in the north would lose citizenship rights, and that those working in the public service sector, would be removed from their positions. These policies mirror the type of marginalization and exclusion Southern Sudanese people have been fighting against for decades. The people of Sudan belong to over 597 ethnic groups and speak over 200 languages and dialects. Of those ethnic groups over half identify as indigenous African, 39% identify as Afro-Arab, 70% are Muslim, 25% follow indigenous traditions and 5% are Christian. If the South secedes, these demographics will shift but the cultural diversity and religious pluralism of the country will remain intact. Africans, who do not speak Arabic as their first language will continue to constitute a majority in the north. And while most are muslim, many do not adhere to the practices and interpretation of Islam put forth by the ruling elite. Forcefully imposing a mono-cultural, national identity on a majority which is already marginalized is a dangerous project, which could potentially lead to future demands for secession.

As we witness our Southern Sudanese brothers and sisters cast their votes and exercise their right to self-determination, it is therefore, my hope that we in the north will take it upon ourselves to organize at the grassroots level and in the diaspora, around an alternative project which recognizes our people’s diversity as its strength. This historic referendum represents a failure on our government’s behalf to make unity a viable option. It also however, represents our own complicity and silence around a project that could ultimately lead to the fracturing of our nation, if left unchallenged. More importantly perhaps, we cannot rely on outsiders with a variety of motives and agendas, to challenge this project for us. It has to come from within, with the support and solidarity of those, who respect Sudanese sovereignity and leadership and have the best interest of all Sudanese people at heart.