Human rights groups slam state on refugee statements

Human rights organizations accused the government of lying to the public about the threat of infiltrators from Africa in an effort to prevent Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers from obtaining sanctuary in Israel. A coalition of the organizations held a press conference in Tel Aviv on Wednesday and presented a report, which they say exposes the government’s lies.

The report was prepared by nine groups in advance of a Knesset debate on the infiltration protection bill scheduled for Wednesday. The participating organizations – the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Amnesty-Israel, ASAF, the Migrant Workers Hotline, the African Refugees Development Center, the Israel Religious Action Center, Kav LaOved and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel – warn that the new law means that Israel would be backing out of its obligations to the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, incarcerating innocent refugees or deporting them to countries where their lives will be at risk and criminalizing those who aid asylum seekers.

The chief accusation in the report is that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and other ministers speak in “two voices.”

The report states that while government officials repeatedly told the public that a vast majority of the asylum seekers are not refugees, but rather labor migrants, they have told the international community a different story.

The report also states that documents produced by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which are based on official numbers that the government provides, show that as of 2009, 90.4 percent of the asylum seekers were indeed refugees from Sudan and Eritrea.

The report further claims that the government regularly inflates the security and demographic threat posed by asylum seekers. It quotes Netanyahu saying two weeks ago that “Israel will not allow its borders to be flooded by illegal foreign workers.”

The coalition also claims in their report that Netanyahu and other ministers are being disingenuous when alluding to both the numbers of asylum seekers waiting to cross over the border and the security risk they pose. The report states that the numbers of asylum seekers entering the country are actually in decline and that not a single asylum seeker has ever been charged with conducting terrorist activities.

Source:jpost.com/

Sudan and Chad agreed to end hostilities - official

December 27, 2009 (KHARTOUM) — Sudan and its neighboring Chad have agreed to end hostilities against each other, said spokesperson of the foreign ministry in Khartoum today.

The Chadian foreign minister Moussa Faki Mahamat, heading a high level security delegation, was this week in Khartoum where he met Sudanese Omer Al-Bashir on Thursday, and held talks with presidential adviser Ghazi Salah Al-Deen Attabani and intelligence chief Mohamed Atta Al-Moula.

Moussa said they had agreed to implement the already signed agreements which deal mainly with the control of joint border and presence of rebel groups in their respective territories.

"Chadian-Sudanese relations will witness a major breakthrough in the coming days," said Sunday Muawiya Osman Khalid Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who further said that the two countries had agreed to stop all forms of hostilities between the two countries at both the military and the media levels.

Khalid also said they agreed to increase the political engagement between the two countries through exchange visits at the different levels including the border towns.

He also indicated that a Sudanese military delegation would travel to Ndjamena within two weeks to discuss implementation of security and military issues as it is agreed in the signed agreement.

According to a non-aggression pact signed in the Senegalese capital, on the sidelined of the Islamic Conference summit on March 13, 2008, the two countries agreed to deploy a monitoring force to ensure stability on the joint border and to establish a contact group composed of Congo, Eritrea, Gabon, Libya and Senegal.

According to the deal, Chad will supply its own soldiers to patrol its own border, Sudan will supply its own soldiers to patrol its own border, and the peace and security force will become a mechanism for observing the two countries.

According to Dakar agreement, an aerial and satellite surveillance would be used to identify the troops movement across the border.

Speaking to Miraya FM on Sunday, the Chadian Consul in Khartoum Hussein Jeddah said his country would ban the activities of the Sudanese rebels inside its territories in implementation of the signed deals between the two countries.

The diplomat disclosed Sudan had evacuated the Chadian rebels at four hundreds kilometers from the joint border.

During the last four years, Sudan and Chad traded accusation of supporting rebel groups who attacked the two capitals and remain active along the border areas.

Khalid stressed that the recent move between the Chad and Sudan is not tactical or related to Darfur peace process in Doha but rather expresses a strategic issue for the two neighbors that have interdependent interests.

Source:sudantribune.com/

Sudan confirms 5 A/H1N1 flu deaths, 145 infection cases

KHARTOUM, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- The Sudanese Health Ministry said five people died of influenza A/H1N1 and 145 cases were confirmed in the country, Khartoum's Al Ahdath daily reported Monday.

The paper quoted Undersecretary of the Sudanese Ministry of Health Kamal Abdul-Ghader as saying that "all cases came from outside Sudan."

He said his ministry has set up 13 centers for the infected people in Khartoum, besides one center in each state of the country, according to the report.

"There are measures to prevent the spread of the disease through surveillance at airports," he was quoted as saying.

He added that the ministry was planning to import vaccines in cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO).

Source:news.xinhuanet.com/english/

NCP favors Sudan’s unity in 2011 referendum: official

December 26, 2009 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese ruling National Congress Party (NCP) stressed today that it is working towards making the choice of unity a dominant one among Southerners in the 2011 referendum.

Mohamed Mandoor Al-Mahdi the NCP’s VP in Khartoum state, said that the party’s leadership is in favor of Sudan’s unity, saying that the discussions with the Sudan People Liberation Movement (SPLM) focused on the required percentage of voters in the referendum to declare the south an independent state.

The NCP official told reporters today that the NCP sought to increase the percentage to bolster hopes that unity option will be possible adding that this issue was thoroughly discussed with the ex-Southern rebel group.

Both parties in the National Unity government have been deadlocked for most of this year on the referendum law particularly over the turnout and the ‘Yes’ vote in favor of independence.

Initially the NCP wanted between 75%-90% yes vote and a two thirds turnout arguing that the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) says that the secession choice should be made difficult.

However, following stiff resistance from the SPLM, the dominant party agreed on a simple majority result for secession and a 60% turnout.

This week the national assembly adopted the referendum bill but NCP legislators modified it by cancelling an article stipulating that southerners who reside outside the region will have to register and vote only in South Sudan.

The SPLM walked out on the voting session to protest the change introduced to the bill threatening escalation if the move is not reversed. The US administration criticized the NCP saying it is reneging on the CPA.

The bill is scheduled to be sent back to the parliament to remove the modifications made by the NCP.

Al-Mahdi denied reports that the national assembly will look into the entire bill but rather at the article in dispute which the parties sat down and agreed on its resolution.

He acknowledged that the referendum law makes secession easier noting that some SPLM figures have publicly expressed their opinions in favor of independence.

On Friday the Ezekiel Gatkuoth, head of South Sudan’s mission to the United States told the Washington Times that the US financially is helping South Sudan to be a viable state should it decide to secede in 2011.

The NCP official slammed the SPLM questioning the fate of $8 billion sent to the south to be spent on development adding that this would have contributed towards making unity attractive.

Source:sudantribune.com

Police investigates suspicious death of Sudanese man in Calgary

Police units on the scene where body was found in an apartment in the 900 block of 38 Street N.E. in the city's Marlborough neighbourhood (Note: not connected to the killing scene for Saturday's death)

Photograph by: Sherri Zickefoose, Calgary Herald

(Calgary AB NSV) - Calgary police are searching for evidence linked to a suspicious death of a Sudanese man on Saturday morning.

Homicide investigators are in the preliminary stages of the investigation and few details can be released at this time. They are waiting for autopsy results.

However, The New Sudan Vision can independently confirm that the victim of Saturday's killing is a Sudanese immigrant, identified as Deng Manyuon (Deng Achol).

NSV understands that Deng left his residence on Friday evening to visit with friends, where they played dominoes.

The last person to see him alive says he and another man drove him off at his residence at around 12 midnight.

The witness said Deng opened his door and told them in Dinka that "You can go now guys. I have arrived."

At approximately 1:25 AM police responded to a domestic complaint, where they found a deceased male lying dead on a roadway near his residence.

Police have not established what transpired in Deng's residence and how the victim's bloody body was found in the snow outside his home.

Deng lived with his wife and his one-year-old son.

Source:newsudanvision.com/

UN: Rebel Group's Attacks in Congo, Sudan May Be Punishable War Crimes

The U.N. Human Rights Office says the attacks and systematic, widespread violations carried out by the Lord's Resistance Army in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Southern Sudan may constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity. The U.N. agency has just issued two reports on the atrocities committed by the LRA over a 10-month period.

Between September 2008 and June 2009, the U.N. report says the Lord's Resistance Army killed 1,200 people and abducted 1,400 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some 600 children and 400 women were among those kidnapped. These terror tactics are blamed for forcing 230,000 terrified villagers to flee their homes.

Last Christmas, the LRA unleashed its most devastating wave of synchronized attacks. Dozens of locations in and around the towns of Faradje and Doruma were attacked. About 500 civilians were killed and hundreds of others abducted.

Human Rights Spokesman, Rupert Colville, says last year's events haunt everyone in the region. "There is a major fear that they may, in fact, try and repeat, at least partly, what they did last Christmas this Christmas and the U.N. peacekeeping force in DRC, MONUC said last week it had gone on high alert because it had some indications that the LRA could try and do what they did last year, which was particularly savage. They had exploited Christmas, exploited the fact that people were gathering in town centers for the festivities. People were gathering in churches and they used that to maximize their impact," he said.

The LRA waged a civil war in Uganda for more than two decades. During that time, the rebel group abducted more than 10,000 children, using them as child soldiers and sex slaves. About a million people were displaced.

After the LRA was driven out of Uganda in 2002 and out of Southern Sudan in 2005, it took refuge in the Orientale Province, a remote corner in northern DRC.

Last year and early this year, the Congolese army, with support from the U.N. Mission in DRC, launched three separate military operations to try to dislodge the Lord's Resistance Army.

As a consequence, the LRA splintered into several groups and crossed into neighboring Central African Republic and Sudan. Colville says this may have reduced the intensity of their attacks, but it has not stopped them. "And the splinters themselves are causing problems in that they are now in three countries again, not just in one ... It is a very worrying situation because as you say, they have gone on for decades this group. They spent about 20 years largely in Uganda. The same style - killing, mutilating, raping, stealing children, sex slavery ... And, because they keep stealing people, they keep replenishing their forces. So, it is a very efficient form of barbarity in the practice by the LRA. They manage to replicate themselves and keep going," he said.

The report urges the international community to help the DRC improve the quality of its security forces and their ability to protect civilians. It also calls for governments to cooperate with the International Criminal Court in investigating and arresting all LRA leaders accused of international crimes

Souce:voanews.com/

OVL pulls out of exploration block in Sudan

ONGC Videsh Ltd, the overseas arm of state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, has pulled out of an exploration block in Sudan

"Not just OVL but the entire consortium has decided to exit the Block 5B," Sudan's Minister of State for Energy and Mining Angelina Jany Teny said today.

OVL has written off investment of $90 million it had made in the block.

The minister said the consortium exited after it did not find oil or gas in the three wells it drilled on the block. The consortium may have also exited because of claims made by Sudan's regional and federal government on the area where the block exists.

The 20,000-sq-km block is in the southern part of the Muglad basin in an area claimed by the federal government based in Khartoum and by the regional government based in Juba, Southern Sudan.

Ascom SA of Moldova was granted rights to one portion of Block 5B from the Southern Sudanese government and began drilling in January 2008, while the Khartoum government awarded the other part of the block to the White Nile Petroleum Operating Co (WNPOC).

The WNPOC consortium included operator Petronas of Malaysia (39 per cent interest), Lundin (24.5 per cent), OVL (23.5 per cent) and Sudan's Sudapet 13 (per cent).

Source:business-standard.com/