Sudan’s National Congress Party denounces Darfuri student actions

The Leadership Office of Sudan's ruling National Congress Party (NCP) has announced “total rejection to using university compounds as scenes of destruction, torching and killing”.

The official Sudan News Agency (SUNA) reports that NCP Deputy Chairman, Engineer Ibrahim Mahmoud, made press statements after a meeting of the NCP Leadership Office which was chaired by President Omar Al Bashir, and which ended in early hours of this morning.

Mahmoud said that the meeting heard a report about recent incidents at Bakht El Rida University “which were interwoven and executed by students loyal to Darfur movements that led to martyrdom of two policemen, and injuring of over 20 others, besides complete destruction of the Faculty of Education”.

The NCP ridiculed the demands of the students, who demand that dismissed students be reinstated to the university, and detained students released, stressing “importance of applying the University law and regulations”.

Mahmoud said this action by students has been rejected and condemned by the all political forces.

Mediation attempts

Kamal El Zein, member of the students’ Crisis Management Committee, told Radio Dabanga on Sunday that “five rounds of mediations did not lead to any solution”. “As a result, the remaining Darfuri students, feeling they have been subjected to fierce racism by the university administration, began to leave for their homes today.”

However, Darfuri university students who arrived in El Fasher over the past days were stopped at the entrance to the North Darfur capital, for their “intentions to destabilise the city”.

The collective resignations by the Bakht El Rida students last week are part of their action to have fellow students readmitted to Bakht El Rida, and the charges of others who have been arrested on accusation of murder, to be dropped.

The ten detained students are accused of killing two policemen during student protests that were violently dispersed at the University of Bakht El Rida on May 9. The students also demand the reinstatement of 14 other students, expelled from the university after the protests and subsequent clashes.

A mass of students wanted to deliver a joint statement to government representatives in Khartoum last Tuesday, but their buses were stopped and their entrance barred after they decided to walk the remaining distance to Khartoum. The village leader of Sheikh El Yagout, south of the capital, offered them shelter in the meantime.