Beja determined to claim their rights over Port Sudan massacre

On Sunday, the Beja commemorated the 2005 ‘Port Sudan Massacre’, in which 21 people were shot dead by Sudanese security forces in the Red Sea capital.

Ibrahim Omar, a relative of one of the victims and a member of the High Committee for the Martyrs of Port Sudan told Radio Dabanga on Sunday that “We hold this annual memorial day to honour our martyrs and repeat our calls for justice.

“The file of the massacre is still locked in the authorities’ drawers, as they want to protect the perpetrators, and are unwilling to open a case,” he said. “The relatives of the victims will not accept any bargain, and are determined to continue claiming their rights by pushing the legal process.”

On the morning of 29 January 2005, government forces sent from Khartoum violently quelled a peaceful demonstration of men, women, and children of the Beja tribe calling for the allocation of more resources to the marginalised region. In addition to the 21 people killed, more than 400 protesters were injured. Hundreds of demonstrators were detained.

Justice

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.

Members of the Democratic Lawyers group took the case to the Constitutional Court that decided positively on the 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.

Lawyer Najla Mohamed Ali told this station that the authorities always protect their forces “even if they have killed 21 peaceful demonstrators in cold blood”.

“The prosecutor refused to file a complaint of premeditated murder under Article 130 of the Sudan Penal Code at the time of the incident. He just ordered the burial of the dead, as if they were unidentified bodies,” she said.

A delegation of the United Popular Front for Justice and the Liberation of Eastern Sudan headed by Dr Zeinab Kabashi recently met with members of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and requested them to consider the case of the “Port Sudan Massacre”.