‘Referendum means end of Doha Document’: Al Bashir

President Omar Al Bashir has announced that after the forthcoming referendum, there will be no negotiations with the hold-out armed movements which he termed ‘mercenaries’ in Darfur anymore.

On Monday evening, following a mass rally in Nyala, capital of North Darfur, on that was part of a pre-referendum tour of the region, Al Bashir was addressing the political parties in the city, he stressed that “the maximum I would give them is an amnesty if they lay down their arms.”

He said that “the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (DDPD) is the final document to which no comma or period will be added”.

He said that “there will be no negotiation with the mercenaries who are in South Sudan and those fighting in Libya [referring to the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM-MM) leader, Minni Arko Minawi, and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) leader Jibril Ibrahim] on power and wealth sharing.”

He stressed that the Doha Document will become obsolete and come to an end after the referendum. Even the Darfur Regional Authority will be disbanded because it will no longer serve a purpose as the people will have chosen whether Darfur will be states or a region.

Minni Minawi

Minawi denounced Al Bashir's comments during his tour in Darfur and described it as “redundant and known to the Sudanese people”.

He told Radio Dabanga that he considered Al Bashir's remarks about the end of the insurgency as impossible, explaining that the revolution will be moving forward.

Minawi said that “the situation in Darfur is worse than ever before,”  pointing to the increase in the numbers of displaced people in the camps, and worsening of their condition, “along with the presence of radical Islamists in Disa, Beer Mazza and Jebel Marra in addition to the demographic change”.

Minawi described the Darfur administrative referendum the government is planning to hold next week as “a political consumption”.

He explained that the government has identified its results in advance.

He said that the people of Darfur will not recognise the referendum which will be void with the end of the current government.

He demanded the international community and the African Union not to recognise the outcome of the referendum or send observers to monitor it.

He considered participation in the referendum as a participation in what he called “ethnic cleansing and genocide”.