Sudan (Republic of Sudan)

For almost 30 years Sudan is a country devastated by internal conflicts, which has witnessed the opposition between the different areas and the central government, led since the 1989 coup, by Omar Al-Bashir and his military-Islamic party.
In January, 2005 an agreement put end to the bloody civil war between the north and the south of the country with the establishment of a provisional Government of national unity. While on this front, the ceasefire holds up, despite sporadic acts of violence, in Darfur the situation is catastrophic. The present crisis on this western region of Sudan has started in 2003. After decades of dereliction, drought, oppression and conflicts on a small scale, two rebel groups, the SLA/M (Sudanese Liberation Army/Movement) and JEM (Justice Equality Movement) aroused against the central Government claiming a proportional division in the resources. The conflict has also ethical matrix, as it involves from one side the local Darfur population, principally Muslim, not Arab but rather belong to different African tribes and from the other side the Janjaweed, militias of Arab Muslims, which are military sustained by the Al-Bashir government. The agreement signed in Abuja on May, 2006 between the Government and one of the rebel factions, has not put end yet to the acts of violence. Both support and concern to this region by the international community is still unsatisfactory. The UN Security Council approved on last July the 31st the 1769 Resolution that provides for arrangement of an UN-African Union hybrid force (UNAMID) that will be formed by 31,000 units within troops and civil personal, aiming to replace the present contingent of the African Union formed by only 7000 units. Nevertheless, in the end of 2007, the temporal limit that was issued by the resolution for the deployment of the UN forces in Darfur will be expired. It is very difficult to believe in this first term will be respected, since the Sudanese president Al-Bashir has rejected the authorization of UN forces who are not Africans, but accepting the 135 Chinese soldiers recently lined up. China is in fact Sudan's main economic partner and army supplier.
According to various NGOs, the constant situation of chaos in Darfur gives a cover for endless human right violation. “Hands off Cain” confirms that, beyond the death penalty for diverse crimes, among them apostasy, the penal code provides, in accordance with the Shari'a laws, corporal punishments such as flagellations, amputations, torments, crucifixions with public exposure of the bodies after the execution. The killing of civil defenseless, the rape, the slavery are day by day reality that unfortunately are not being testified on appropriate way because of the ostracism and the threats imposed by the Al-Bashir government against journalists and humanitarians. For the same motive, the valuation regarding the systematic massacre of the population in Darfur is unclear. The UN sources speak of numbers between 200,000 and 400,000 victims. Clearer is the valuation of the refugees, most of them in the Chad border, but also internally displaced persons (IDP), which amount of 2,5 millions. A recent report of the Save Darfur Coalition speaks of the attempt of re-settlement of Darfurian villages enforced by the government through the collocation of Arab population from other areas of the country.
The human rights activist, Simon Deng, Christian from South Sudan, recently in visit in Israel, is a living witness of the slavery phenomenon widespread in Sudan. When he was 9 years old he was given like a “present” to a family as a slave by the Arab militias that have plundered his village. He succeeded to escape after years of abuses and currently lives in the USA. Dr. Mudawi Ibrahm Adam, one of the main human rights activists in Sudan, was imprisoned for long periods having denounced the government's involvement in mass human rights violations in Darfur.