Sudan Prisoners and Enforced Disappearances Club
Khaled Masa
"No order or instruction of public, civilian, military or other authority may be invoked to justify the crime of enforced disappearance." This is the explicit text of article 6 of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, as the United Nations opted on August 30th every year for a world day dedicated to solidarity with the cause of the worlds enforced disappearances.
In order to familiarize the world with the seriousness of the crime of enforced disappearance, the growing phenomenon and its increasing victims have been included in the list of grave crimes mentioned in the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (3/9) and security to protect persons from this crime as well as its offence. (9) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as read in the context of the guiding principles of the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights for protection from enforced disappearance in Africa.
The Sudanese situation is not a recent case in the Black Register of Enforced Disappearances. It was not until months after the military coup d état of 30 June 1989 year against the civilian authority that existed in the Sudan until the disappearance of the poet/Abu Dhar al-Ghafari was recorded by the security authorities at the time. "Enforced disappearance" of a ballistic weapon in the face of the current of civil resistance in the Sudan to witness the disappearance in September 2004 of a student/Ahmed Dhawalbeit to leave his disappearance a major question about the fate of dozens of enforced disappearances of civilian students and activists as a result of their resistance to the policies of the then regime.
Even after the fall of the ruling regime with the December Revolution and the opening of the Sudanese situation to the atmosphere of freedoms and the rule of law, the crimes of enforced disappearance did not lose sight of the Sudanese political landscape. The Sudanese human rights and civil organizations monitored the crime of breaking up the sit-in in in June 2019 and the Commission of Inquiry into the victims of enforced disappearance established by the Attorney General. (30 cases) of those who had been forcibly disappeared and whose fate had not been known as of the date of writing.
Despite the legal and human rights achievement that culminated in the struggles of the anti-violation movement after the December Revolution, with the Sudans ratification of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance in February 2021, the register of enforced disappearances remains open for further documentation.
The April War constituted the appropriate space for writing the worst report on enforced disappearances of civilians who were victims of this state of war and an additional violation of its record of violations.
The United Nations Integrated Transition Support Mission (UNIKOM), in its final briefing to the Security Council and prior to the expiration of its mandate with the last extension in December this year, mentioned the records of enforced disappearances in the paragraph. (c) of the report on the situation of human rights, the rule of law and protection and monitored (241) Cases of arbitrary disappearance and detention, including 17 women and two girls, from the end of August until the first of October, to add these numbers to the previous scary numbers provided by (Missing Persons Initiative/577 cases) and (715 cases/Sudanese group of victims of enforced disappearance) Human Rights Watch also went on media reports (Reuters) 5,000 missing since the April War broke out so far.
The moral, national and legal duty requires all those concerned to comply with the Sudans international obligations ratified by the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance to endeavour to form a Sudanese "Club of Prisoners and Enforced Disappeared Persons" to take strong account of the cases of prisoners, detainees and enforced disappeared persons in circumstances where there are no minimum human rights guaranteed under international laws and treaties.
International law has not even left the circumstances of the war as a justification for violating the rights of prisoners and detainees, whether civilian or military, and imposed a package of demands that cannot deprive them of their right to liberty, the right to fair courts, lawful conditions of detention and the non-use of enforced disappearance as a weapon of war.
"Enforced disappearance" of innocent wounds and persistence of war fuels the fire of war, aggravates the disadvantage of war speech and hatred, exacerbates the abuses inherent in the state of war, and adds additional obstacles to access to solutions to major problems that have continued the political and military conflict in the Sudanese State.
