Thursday

28th Mar 2024

Human rights activists call on EU to sanction Sudan

Human rights activists are calling on the EU to put real pressure on the Sudanese government to stop the atrocities in the country's Darfur region which have killed more than 200,000 people in the last four years and where violence has escalated in the last few days.

"Smart and specific sanctions - targeting those who are responsible for the suffering of the people of Darfur - should [put in place] immediately," said Sudanese human rights lawyer Osman Hummaida.

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"This is the most effective way," he told EUobserver, adding that the Sudanese government knows that "they cannot [afford to] lose the European people and the European market."

Last year, EU exports to Sudan amounted to €1,529 million and imports to the bloc from the largest country in Africa came to €122 million, according to the European Commission's statistical office Eurostat.

Mr Hummaida was in Brussels on Wednesday (10 October) to represent another Sudanese human rights lawyer and member of the Sudanese Parliament Salih Mahmoud Osman, nominated for this years' Sakharov Prize – the European Parliament's human rights award.

EU foreign affairs ministers, meeting in Luxembourg on Monday (15 October), are expected to give the final go-ahead for the deployment of EU troops in eastern Chad and the Central African Republic where fears of spill-over violence from Sudan could make the already existing conflicts and humanitarian crises in the two countries worse.

Although the ministers warned Khartoum of sanctions this spring, no such decision has yet been made or planned for next week's meeting.

Earlier this year Chris Patten, the former European commissioner for external relations, lambasted the bloc for issuing numerous statements of concern instead of imposing sanctions on Khartoum, pointing out the EU foreign ministers have formally declared concern about Sudan more than 50 times since April 2004.

Since 2004, more than 200,000 people have died while 2.5 million have been forced from their homes by government forces or the government-backed militia, the Janjaweed.

Fighting flared up in Sudan's western region in 2003 when African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudan government in a conflict started over water resources.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher on Sudan Leslie Lefkow is puzzled by the lack of European sanctions.

"If you look at practice with other countries, individual sanctions have been applied in situations which are far less dramatic," she told EUobserver.

"The reason why the EU is reluctant to move on this is remains very unclear, it doesn't match with the rhetoric at all."

She argued that putting targeted sanctions on individuals in Sudan would also send a very important message that the impunity of certain policy makers in Khartoum is at an end. "That there is a willingness to take serious action," she added.

"This is a government that we have watched for almost twenty years now, and it's a government that has used the same strategies repeatedly. It is very clear to those of us who has followed developments in Sudan for a long time that it's a government that only responds to concrete pressure," Ms Lefkow said.

"It's baffling that people in different governments in the European Union who have also followed Sudan for years don't seem to have learned this lesson," she pointed out.

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