Sudan bans main opposition party
2011-09-05 11:24
Khartoum - Sudan has banned the main opposition party, closed its offices and made sweeping arrests across the country, its secretary general said Sunday, as fighting continued in a key stronghold of the SPLM-North.
"The [ruling] National Congress Party has banned the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in all states and arrested a large number of its members and seized property and documents belonging to it in different states and localities," Yasser Arman said in a statement.
Arman gave a detailed list of more than 10 party members and local leaders who have allegedly been arrested since Tuesday in various states, including West Darfur, Gezira, North Kordofan and Sennar.
"What is happening now, in different towns and villages in Sudan against members and leaders of the SPLM, is something that was organised and planned over a long period, with the aim of... eliminating the SPLM as a major national and democratic force in north Sudan," Arman said.
Other party members said the government had shut down all the offices of the party's northern branch, the SPLM-North, on Saturday.
The ex-rebel movement is the ruling party of South Sudan, which formally split when the south gained independence from the north on July 09, after decades of devastating conflict.
Sudan's deputy information minister, Sanaa Hamad, confirmed that Khartoum had declared the SPLM illegal in the north, saying it was not a legally registered political party following southern secession.
Security violations
"But this situation will not have an impact on the members of the party as individuals... The only people who have been arrested were involved in illegal activities," she told AFP.
The move against the SPLM-North comes shortly after deadly fighting erupted in Blue Nile state between the Sudanese army and ex-rebel troops loyal to the elected governor, Malik Agar, the party's chairperson.
President Omar al-Bashir sacked Agar from his job on Friday and appointed a caretaker military leader after declaring a state of emergency.
Fighting continued in Blue Nile on Sunday, with Defence Minister Abdelrahim Mohammed Hussein quoted by state media saying that a major battle took place in Dindiro.
Earlier, the United Nations said 16 000 people - the entire estimated population - were reported to have fled from the flashpoint town of Kurmuk across the border into Ethiopia.
The Khartoum government has shown itself increasingly determined to assert its authority within its new borders following southern secession, moving to disarm troops outside its control.
Bashir said on Sunday that the Sudanese state would "deal with any military or security violations by the SPLM," in a statement published by the official SUNA news agency.
In his first public remarks on the conflict, he added that the people of Blue Nile had rejected the option of self-government in the so-called popular consultations.
Constitutional change
The Carter Centre said last week that the consultations process in Blue Nile had stalled after their deadline was formally extended in July.
The US monitoring group also said the conflict in nearby South Kordofan state, where the army is also battling SPLM militias, should serve as a lesson on "the potentially devastating consequences" if military action replaced dialogue.
Both states are located north of Sudan's new international border, but were key battlegrounds during the north-south civil war and have large numbers of SPLM-North supporters and troops who fought alongside the ex-southern rebels.
Arman on Saturday called the army's aggression in Blue Nile a "coup" against Agar, the state's elected leader, which, he said, demonstrated that constitutional change in Sudan was impossible under the present regime.
He vowed to fight for regime change through mass protest and armed struggle, in co-operation with the three main Darfuri rebel groups, who the SPLM-North signed an agreement with last month.
- SAPA