Opposition ‘strongly condemns’ Islamic conference

Opposition forces and the Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) ‘strongly condemned’ the 8th General Conference of the Islamic Movement (IM) that began in Khartoum on Thursday, 15 November, Radio Dabanga has learned. They stated this conference, which was concluded on Friday and was led by Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir, is ‘unrelated to the people of Sudan or their issues’. Kamal Omar, political affairs secretary of the Popular Congress Party (PCP), claimed in an interview with Radio Dabanga that the ruling authority is ‘holding this conference to give themselves Islamic credit’. He continued saying that leaders of Sudan ‘lack faith, consideration, politics and ethics’, what is evident given ‘they are the ones killing citizens in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile’. In addition, the government is spending nine billion Sudanese pounds in the conference, while the yellow fever epidemic is killing citizens in Darfur and tens of thousands of people in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile are denied access to relief, the secretary stated. The IM was reportedly attended by 120 Islamists from 30 countries, including Khaled Meshaal from Hamas, Rashid Ghannouchi, the President of Alnahda Party in Tunisia, Mohamed Badie the advisor of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in addition to 4.000 Islamists from different states of Sudan. On his turn, Omar declared his party is not taking part in the conference he described as ‘falsely islamized’. He stressed the conference is distorting the idea of Islam, and that he is fighting to overthrow the regime and establish a ‘new Islam’ that values citizenship, democracy and the rule of law. The secretary added that al-Bashir should be the one ‘taken to court, instead of him arresting his own citizens’.   ‘Disappointing’ Omar called the participation of Arab leaders in the IM as ‘disappointing’ and he wonders how these leaders can talk about Arab Spring revolutions in their countries and at the same time accept al-Bashir’s regime by visiting him in Khartoum. The secretary asserted al-Bashir is ‘worse than Mubarak and Zine Abidin Ben Ali, as he killed more people then both former leaders’. He also said that the Arab leaders attending the IM should now visit Bashar al-Assad in Syria, as currently there are no differences between him and al-Bashir. ‘IM provides nothing new’ The spokesman of the SRF, Abu al-Qasim Imam El-Haj, stated the IM ‘provides nothing new’ and that it does not represent the people of Sudan.   He explained that the ‘so-called Islamic conference is in fact the NCP’, which is killing people in South Kordofan, in Blue Nile and in Darfur. El-Haj pointed out that these people came to power ‘with the worst form of political Islam’ and described the conference and its participants as a group that ‘kills and loots people in the name of religion’. Political Islam has nothing more to offer the Sudanese than the crises they have experienced so far, he continued, saying that there is no solution to the crisis introduced in the country by the NCP. The spokesman suggested that the only way out is that people stand behind the SRF, who aims at implementing a comprehensive change in Sudan and a radical change of regime.Photo: Khartoum