Vatican official suggests human rights campaign

A cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church has suggested that the time may be right for the launch of an international campaign of protest against Sudan for violating human rights, according to reports from Zenit news agency, which specialises in reporting Catholic affairs.

Cardinal Roberto Tucci, president of Vatican Radio's administration committee, made the call last week when commenting on the case of Abok Alfa Akok, who had been condemned to death by stoning for allegedly being pregnant out of wedlock, the agency stated.

Zenit is a Rome-based international news agency whose declared mission is to provide objective coverage for a worldwide audience of issues emanating from and concerning the Catholic Church. [see http://www.zenit.org/english/]

An appeals court in Southern Darfur State, bordering the Central African Republic, had recently overturned the sentence of death by stoning against Akok, and sent the case back to a lower court in the state for fresh sentencing, Reuters news agency reported on Sunday, 10 February.

The criminal court in Nyala, about 800 km southwest of Khartoum, sentenced Akok to death by stoning for adultery in early December, according to news reports.

The original ruling was made in line with Shari'ah [Islamic] law, even though Akok - a member of Sudan's Dinka tribe, the largest ethnic group in the south - was Christian, according to Reuters. Akok appealed against the sentence on 3 January, it added.

The US-based Human Rights Watch expressed its deep concern on 1 February - including in a letter to Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir - about "barbaric punishments" in Sudan, including Akok's sentence to death by stoning and the use of amputations as a punishment, also in Darfur.
[http://www.hrw.org/africa/sudan.php]

"For years in Sudan there has been authentic persecution by the Muslim government against the peoples of the south, [with] black skins, of Christian or animist religion," Zenit quoted Tucci as saying on Vatican Radio.

"The Shari'ah has been applied to a person who is not Muslim," he said. "It would be appropriate to start a campaign of protest against what is happening. Why doesn't the United Nations intervene?"

The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Sudan, Gerhart Baum, said in a report in November 2001 that it was untrue - as some Christian fundamentalists argued - that there was a war of religious persecution in Sudan. There was concern over restrictions on freedom of religion, discrimination and the increasingly Islamic character of education and public life, but there was no systematic suppression of Christian churches, he said.

"The United Nations Commission for Human Rights is concerned with the [Akok] case, but perhaps this action should be supported by an authentic international campaign that will serve to shed light on the Sudanese situation," Zenit quoted Tucci as saying.

Among those to indicate support for Tucci's suggestion had been Archbishop Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya of Kisangani, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the president of the Symposium of the Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), the agency added.

Meanwhile, the UK-based Sudanese Victims of Torture Group (SVTG) this week alleged that student human rights activists at the College of Technical Science in Omdurman, outside the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, had been dismissed or suspended under the government's 2002 Student Discipline and Code of Conduct Act.

The group said it considered this Act, which prohibits students from political organising or campaigning for human rights, to be part of a general "attempt to silence opposition and prevent individuals or groups from expressing their beliefs and opinions".

It called on the government to reinstate the suspended students, repeal the student discipline Act and "ensure the protection of fundamental freedoms of expression and association, as set out in the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights."

Baum reported in November 2001 that - with the extension of the State of Emergency to the end of 2002 - restrictions on nongovernmental organisations and the media, and a campaign of harassment, intimidation and persecution of political opponents of the government, political freedom had been restricted rather than relaxed last year.

What had appeared to be serious efforts to democratise Sudan were discontinued at the end of 2000 (when President Umar Hasan al-Bashir declared the State of Emergency after a political struggle with the former Speaker of parliament, Hasan al-Turabi), with some security laws tightened and the security police stepping up their activities, Baum said.

Baum deplored the recurrence of human rights violations in Sudan and the lack of official action to investigate and punish such abuses. He encouraged the Khartoum government "to take positive steps in the direction of a real transition to democracy - including, primarily, repealing the State of Emergency".