SOLVING THE CRISIS OF SUDAN: THE RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION VERSUS STATE TORTURE.

• Author: El-Tigani, Mahgoub

AS IN MANY ARAB AND AFRICAN COUNTRIES, [1] the discourse of Sudanese state-torture policies and/or practices indicates that these dehumanizing atrocities are strongly correlated with tyrannical regimes, rather than democratically-oriented systems of rule. Democracy encourages freedoms and the respect of human rights and allows a greater exercise of the right to self-determination, organization, peaceful assembly, freedom of expression and the press than authoritative governments do.

The human rights violations states that parties are accountable for crimes against humanity in accordance with international law and include a great number of acts instigated by the Bill of Rights (the International Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention on Economic, Social and Economic Rights), in addition to a compilation of significant international norms (United Nations, 1987).

In essence, state bureaucracies violate human rights in the course of exercising their authority. An increase in state tortures and crimes against humanity is closely correlated with the extent of oppression and the persecution a state pursues against opposition. Unlike authoritative regimes, a democratically-oriented government is usually more tolerant and acceptable to the differences of opinion and political activity than authoritative regimes are.

The case of the Sudan indicates that over time authoritarian regimes were excessively suppressive at the time democratic governments became more tolerant and willing to reconcile national disputes peacefully. Sudan governments, especially the existing rule of the National Islamic Front (NIF which renamed itself recently as the Congress Party) have been involved in a large number of gross human rights violations such as genocide and extrajudicial killing, tortures, acts of slavery and ethnic cleansing, confiscation of private property, arbitrary arrest, etc.

Torture and acts of civil war constitute the main focus of this study as they certainly are directly related to the struggles of Sudanese southerners and the other marginal populations of the country such as the Nuba, Beja, Ingessana, and many other Sudanese-African groups in Darfur for the exercise of the right of self-determination as a viable way to save their lives and enjoy civil rights and freedoms in their own regions.

Initially, a brief account documenting state tortures with respect to major facilitating factors, as well as major inhibiting factors is offered. Subsequent sections focus on characteristics of the perpetrators, patterns of victimization, and different versions of individual and collective reactions under different forms of political systems. Legal, psychological and social consequences of civil war and tortures will be adequately exposed.

The exercise of the right to self-determination, as a significant international norm that protects the human rights and freedoms of minorities and marginal groups, will be discussed as a strong mechanism to stop civil war, state-torture, and other crimes against humanity in Sudan. [2]

The analysis is meant to explain and encourage a clearer understanding and projection of Sudanese constituencies and national identifications in ethnic, cultural, and political terms rather than any political configuration of Sudanese people as Arabs or Arabized simply because Sudan is a member of the Arab League or even that Arab or Arabized cultures have been remarkably dominant and ruling since the medieval ages.

WAR AND TORTURE AS HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS

Of all tools of destruction and degradation, the resort to end escalation of civil war is a major mechanism of torture, extra-judicial killing, and political domination by warring parties, in general, and anti-democratic governments, in particular. Dr Gaspar Biro (UN, 1994), the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in The Sudan, wrote: "Most of the violations are to be considered in the context of a 10-year civil war in the south.... [R]egarding the whole range of human rights recognized by the United Nations,... almost all aspects of life are concerned."

The absence of democratic rule, an independent judiciary, free trade unions and political parties has consistently acted as a prime mover of state tortures and crimes against humanity. The terror of NIF-militias and the Popular Defense Forces, are fully related to the dismissals of thousands of skilled professionals, workers, attorneys and judges, army and police officers and their replacement by NIF supporters regardless of education, training, and experience. "The land from Malakal to upper Bahr al-Arab lay devastated, the populace was decimated, the cattle were stolen, the soil was uncultivated. The stench of death hung heavily over the land, and the tragic scene was compounded by a killer drought" (Burr & Collins, 1995:19). In the decade of NIF dictatorial rule in Sudan (1989-1999), the same disasters were equally spread to the western and eastern regions of Sudan with the continuity of civil war.

The International Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (United Nations, 1987) states in Article I that, "1. The term 'torture' means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. 2. This article is without prejudice to any international instrument or national legislation which does or may contain provisions of wider application."

Documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch (Africa), AOHR, and SHRO-Cairo throughout the 1990s, are the killings of Dr. Ali Fadl in a ghost house (a clandestine detention place) tortured to death; the medical negligence of educator Abdel-Monim Salman in Kober Prison until death; the extrajudicial killing of advocate Hamdan Hassan Kuri and his father; the shooting of engineer Abu Bakr Rasikh and the extrajudicial execution of businessmen Girgis, the son of the Coptic Bishop in Khartoum, Archangelo, and Magdi Mahgoub; the killing of Al-Taya Abu 'Agla, a student expressing her rejection of the NIF rule in a peaceful demonstration; the slavery of Gok Makuei Abang and other children; the brutal tortures of Brigadier Mohamed Ahmed Elrayah, student leader Magdi Abdel-Monim Hassan, and nurse Buthayna Doaka to mention only a few; the thousands of victims killed by air bombardments and the millions displaced from their homes in the war zones or largely massacred as a part of the regime's ethnic cleansing of southerners, the Nuba, the Ingessana, Masaleet, Zagawa, the Beja, and many other Sudanese-African groups in Darfur. The extrajudicial killings of army officers on 24 April 1990, lent support to the dehumanization process the regime exercised over a decade or so by state tortures against people.

In a clear report on state tortures in Sudan, the U.S. State Department (1991:378-379) emphasized the victimization of marginal groups who virtually included all non-NIP supporters, especially SPLM sympathizers: "Detainees in ghost houses were subjected to varying forms of torture, including whipping and clubbing; electric shock; the kicking of ribs or kidneys; binding of hands for long periods; blindfolding for days at a time; immersion of hands in boiling water; suspension from ceiling fans; and psychological torture, such as mock executions... Prison conditions are harsh, especially in Shalla prison in Darfur. Political detainees and suspected SPLA/M sympathizers ... were confined with criminals and mentally ill and subjected to overcrowding, deprivation of water under conditions of extreme heat, [unhealthy] living conditions causing typhus and other diseases, lack of medical treatment, and denial of access to family and friends.... Detainees were also held on the roof of security headquarters in Khartoum in overcrowded conditions and in searing heat with limited food and inadequate toilet facilities. Others were forced to remain spread-eagled or on their knees with hands on their heads along the outside walls of security building for extended periods."

In all state tortures and disasters of civil war, Sudanese women and children suffered the most, were brutalized, and even lynched by the NIF regime (SHRO-Cairo Human Rights Quarterly, I 999s). "in a procedure unprecedented through the modem history of Sudan, the Sudanese authorities conferred upon students an obligation of national service in connection with the right to education. The schools transferred education certificates to the ministry of defense which, in turn, allowed their delivery only in the training camps.... Thousands of students were thus deprived of the rights to education and the right to conscientious objection to military service. . . . Most of the conscripts were killed without any actual fighting in the war zones (SHRO-Cairo, 1998). The brave women and children who protested these violations were unlawfully tortured and arrested.

MOTIVATIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF TORTURE PERPETRATORS

Torture and other gross violations of human rights are eloquently explained by Ali Mazrui (1986:243) in this statement: "[V]olations of human rights are preceded by a process of psychic subhumanization. The violator subhumanizes his victim in his own imagination... The violator does not need to dehumanize his victim completely. On the contrary, residual humanity is often necessary to...