‘Sudan dialogue meeting between Islamists’: rebel leader

The announcement by President Al Bashir on Sunday of a series of resolutions paving the way for more freedoms in Sudan has raised many critical comments. The leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement-AW, Abdel Wahid El Nur, described the consultative meeting of Sunday as a “dialogue between groups of Islamists, and parties close to them, and not a dialogue of the Sudanese people”. El Nur, who is also Co-Deputy President of the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), told Radio Dabanga that “all the prisoners filling the prisons of Darfur, the Nuba Mountains, and the Blue Nile, should be released.  Al Bashir is now talking about freedoms, while the people of Darfur and the other marginalised areas are dying as a result of militias and Antonov attacks, or starvation. What is needed now is the entire uprooting of Al Bashir’s regime.” National Consensus Forces The President had announced the new measures at the onset of a consultative meeting on a broad national dialogue in Khartoum on Sunday, in which 83 political parties participated. A group of 17 political parties, united in the National Consensus Forces (NCF), did not respond to Al Bashir’s call for a national dialogue, and boycotted the consultative meeting. The NCF described the decisions issued by the Sudanese President Al Bashir, as “insufficient”. “They do not meet the demands required for a conducive climate to start the dialogue,” Siddig Yousif, a prominent leader of the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) told Radio Dabanga.   The resolutions involve freedom of activities for all political parties, press freedom, and the release of political detainees “who have not been found to be involved in criminal acts”. “Al Bashir’s condition for the release of detainees is that there exist no criminal charges against them, while he knows that the vast majority has been criminally charged. They are facing trials without having committed any crime other than demonstrating, which is their constitutional right.” The SCP leader noted that for this reason, the NCF’s demands for the abolishment of the laws restricting the freedom of expression, the press, and political action, are still valid despite the President’s decisions. File photo: SLM leader Abdel Wahid El Nur (Sudan Tribune) Related:Coalition of 17 parties to boycott Sudan’s ‘national dialogue’ (7 April 2014) ‘Security Sudan, rights for citizens first, then national dialogue’: CSOs (4 April 2014) Darfur rebels reject NCP ‘guarantees’ for dialogue (20 March 2014) Al Bashir speech disappoints Sudanese (28 January 2014)