U.S. and European media

December 21, 2022

Sudan Tribune: Mbeki to brief the UNSC on the AU roadmap for Darfur.  The chairman of the African Union High Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP) on Darfur Thabo Mbeki will address the UN Security Council (UNSC) on Monday regarding the report he compiled this year containing a roadmap for resolving the crisis in Sudan's Western region.  The former South African president has just concluded a visit to Sudan where he met with different political parties and government officials on the mechanisms to implement the recommendations of the African Union High Level Panel on Darfur (AUPD).  Last month Mbeki expressed disappointment with what he suggested to be a non-endorsement by the UNSC to the AUPD report with an implicit criticism of Western countries sitting on the council.

Reuters: Sudan Passes Security Bill Despite Protests.  Sudan's parliament passed controversial national security reforms on Sunday in the face protests by the opposition and from southerners that they grant agents sweeping powers and could damage elections next year. Activists have accused Sudan's powerful National Security Service (NSS) of carrying out torture and killings during the country's north-south civil war. Sudan denies widespread abuses have taken place. The new bill curbed the amount of time NSS agents could hold suspects, but approved existing powers of arrest, search and seizure.

BBC News: Sudan security law threatens free poll - SPLM.  Reforms of Sudan's strict security laws do not go far enough and threaten to undermine the 2010 election, southern Sudanese politicians have said.  President Omar al-Bashir's party passed the new law, which shortens the amount of time suspects can be held.  But it keeps the right of intelligence agents to search and detain suspects.   The southern SPLM party wants those powers given to police. They say the security forces will arrest anyone campaigning against Mr Bashir.

Associated Press: UN: Ugandan rebel attacks may have been war crimes.  The U.N. reported Monday that the Ugandan-based Lord's Resistance Army killed, mutilated and raped villagers in Sudan and Congo in 2008 and 2009 in what may have been crimes against humanity.  A separate report by the U.N.'s rights office said that, in at least 27 attacks on villages in southern Sudan, the Lord's Resistance Army killed more than 80 civilians and kidnapped many others to use as child soldiers, sex slaves and spies.  The report called the attacks in Sudan, which it said took place between December 2008 and March 2009, deliberate and brutal.

The following op-ed appeared in the Washington Post by John Prendergast: Five myths about genocide and violence in Sudan.  During Sudan's half-century of independence, few spots on Earth have witnessed as much death and destruction, with 2 1/2 million war-related fatalities during the past two decades alone. Although the Darfur genocide that began in 2003 is only one of the conflicts raging in the country, they all stem from the same cause: the abuse of power. The ruling party represses independent voices and supports militias that have used genocide, child soldiers and rape as weapons of war.

Sudan faces a critical new year, with an unfree election coming in April and a referendum on the independence of the south the following January -- tripwires that could provoke a return to full-scale war. In Washington, meanwhile, few challenges have produced a greater chasm between words and deeds. A first step toward closing that gap is debunking the myths about Sudan that persist among policymakers, diplomats and the public:

The Darfur Daily News is a service of the Save Darfur Coalition. To subscribe to the Daily News, please email [email protected]. For media inquiries, please contact Ashley Roberts at (202) 478-6181, or [email protected].