Teacher detained after Unamid visits South Darfur school

A goodwill humanitarian visit by Unamid to a school in South Darfur’s Gireida camp for the displaced, has resulted in the subsequent detention of a teacher in front of his class.

A witness told Radio Dabanga on Wednesday that a delegation from Unamid visited the South Basic School in the camp. They presented gifts of duvets, pens, and bags of milk powder to the students and teachers, and praised the initiative of the school. The school’s English teacher, Prof Suleiman, thanked the delegation on behalf of the school.

After the Unamid delegation left, a contingent of National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) agents pulled-up in a vehicle and detained Prof Suleiman in front of his class.

Suleiman has been taken to the NISS offices in Gireida. His family have not been allowed to see him and the witness expressed his fear that the teacher might be subject to torture or ill-treatment.

He appealed to demanded human rights and humanitarian organisations to intervene to protect Suleiman.

Pattern

In late July, the Donald Booth, the US Special Envoy to Sudan and South Sudan, paid a visit to Darfur as well. In Nierteti in South Darfur, he met with a group of 20 displaced elders, women, and youths, who told him about the killings, rapes, detentions, and torture by the government and its militias, and the occupation of their land by new settlers. Not much later, security agents detained 15 of them. Some of them were released after days, the others were transferred to Khartoum and only released on 29 September.

The resulting fear of arrest and persecution prevented leaders, sheiks and omdas representing the displaced of Nierteti from speaking frankly when they met with UN Director of Africa Affairs at the Department of Peace Keeping operations, Michael J. Kingsley earlier this month.