Beja commemorate 2005 Port Sudan massacre today
Today, the Beja people in Port Sudan commemorate the 12th anniversary of the killing of 21 peaceful protesters in Port Sudan’s Deim El Arab district.
On 29 January 2005, government forces violently quelled a demonstration calling on Khartoum to allocate more resources to the marginalised region inhabited by the Beja tribe. In addition to the 21 people killed, popularly referred to as “martyrs”, more than 400 protesters, among them women and children, were injured. Hundreds of demonstrators were detained.
Today, the Beja people in Port Sudan commemorate the 12th anniversary of the killing of 21 peaceful protesters in Port Sudan's Deim El Arab district.
On 29 January 2005, government forces violently quelled a demonstration calling on Khartoum to allocate more resources to the marginalised region inhabited by the Beja tribe. In addition to the 21 people killed, popularly referred to as “martyrs”, more than 400 protesters, among them women and children, were injured. Hundreds of demonstrators were detained.
On Friday, the High Committee for the Martyrs of Port Sudan announced that the preparations for the commemoration of the 12th anniversary of the ‘Port Sudan massacre’ have been completed.
Ibrahim Belia, one of the representatives of the families of the dead told Radio Dabanga that the Committee has stepped up their media efforts, using posters and loudspeakers to urge the people to attend the programme, scheduled to be held in the Martyrs' Square in Deim El Arab.
Family members of the ‘martyrs’ and representatives of the Democratic Lawyers and a number of the opposition forces will speak at the ceremony.
Justice
Belia further reported that the families of the victims will adhere to its stance that the killers should be brought to justice, “in spite of the legal obstacles we faced and are still facing”.
“The families of the martyrs will take the case to the African Court and other international courts in case we are not able to achieve justice in Sudan,” Belia said.
He praised the members of the Democratic Lawyers “who exerted tremendous efforts to take the case to the court”.
For years, Beja leaders called for the prosecution of the forces who killed the demonstrators to no avail. The annual commemoration of the massacre was sometimes banned as well.
After the Constitutional Court decided positively on the lawyers’ request for a new investigation in late 2015, the authorities in Port Sudan agreed in October 2016 to reopen the file. The prosecutor agreed to request the Defence and Interior Ministers to lift the immunity enjoyed by members of the regular armed forces. Yet, he refused to add the files of a previous investigation into the incident to the case.
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