Protestors denounce referral of Darfur crimes to ICC

Tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum on Tuesday, to protest against a UN resolution calling for those accused of crimes in Darfur to be tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC), an eyewitness said. The demonstration, organised by the ruling National Congress Party, came two days after the Sudanese government rejected UN Security Council resolution 1593, adopted on 31 March. On Sunday, the Sudanese Council of Ministers declared its "total rejection" of the resolution, which it said lacked "justice and objectivity". President Umar al-Bashir declared that his government would refuse to hand over any Sudanese citizen to be tried outside the country. Chanting angry slogans, Tuesday's crowd stopped at the UN building, the French and British embassies, and finally the US embassy, where demonstrators shouted: "Down, down, USA," according to an eyewitness. Protestors also made critical remarks about UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, US President George Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac. Some attacked the perimeter fence of the UN Development Programme compound, the UN News Service reported. When that failed, the crowd threw stones into the compound until a group of elders and community leaders handed over a letter, to be sent to Annan. The state-owned mobile phone company, MobiTel, had publicised the protest march via a text message sent out to many subscribers on Monday evening, according to Reuters. Government-controlled radio and newspapers also advertised the demonstration. Over the weekend, Muhammad Uthman al-Mirghani, leader of the National Democratic Alliance - a coalition of opposition parties - also denounced the prosecution of Sudanese nationals outside Sudan, while Sadiq al-Mahdi, leader of the northern opposition Ummah Party, supported the resolution. Although there was little violence - a group of students reportedly threw stones at a rental car with UN markings – Tuesday's march was mostly peaceful, and no casualties were reported. A similar demonstration is planned for Port Sudan, a town in northeastern Sudan, on Wednesday. The first protest against Council resolutions took place on Sunday, in El-Fasher in the western state of North Darfur. Meanwhile on Tuesday in New York, Annan met with Luis Moreno Ocampo, the prosecutor of the ICC, and gave him a sealed list of 51 suspected perpetrators of atrocities in Darfur. Annan had previously received the list from the International Commission of Inquiry, which - on 31 January - published a report on its investigation into the scale and extent of human-rights violations. Fred Eckhard, Annan's spokesman, said in a statement on Tuesday that nine boxes and 11 CD-ROMS of material, collected over a period of three months by the commission, had been handed over to the prosecutor’s office in The Hague, in the Netherlands. He added that it was up to the prosecutor to decide whether the names on the commission's list would be made public. "Now, we have a common task - to end the culture of impunity," Moreno Ocampo said on receiving the sealed list. "I will closely monitor ongoing crimes in Darfur - as well as efforts to prevent and stop them," he added. The war in Darfur pits Sudanese government troops and militias - allegedly allied to the government - against rebels fighting to end what they have called marginalisation and discrimination of the region's inhabitants by the state. Over 2.4 million people continue to be affected by the conflict, 1.85 million of whom are internally displaced or have been forced to flee to neighbouring Chad.