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Sudan's Bashir re-elected with 94 percent of vote

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Omar al-Bashir, who faces war-crimes charges, declared winner by election commission, extending his 25-year rule.

The Election Commission put turnout at 46.4 percent and denied widespread reports of low participation [Reuters]

The Election Commission put turnout at 46.4 percent and denied widespread reports of low participation [Reuters]

by Al Jazeera

Sudan’s Election Commission says President Omar al-Bashir has won re-election with 94 percent of the vote, extending his 25-year rule despite war-crimes charges and domestic rebellions.

The Election Commission put turnout at 46.4 percent and denied widespread reports of low participation.

Mokhtar al-Assam, the head of the commission, announced the results on Monday, saying reports of low turnout were “not accurate”.

The four-day vote began on April 13. Nearly 13 million people were registered to vote at nearly 11,000 polling centres. Polling stations in the capital, Khartoum, were largely deserted.

Bashir, who took power in a bloodless coup in 1989, is the only sitting head of state facing genocide charges at the International Criminal Court. The charges stem from the conflict in the Darfur region.

Conflict in Sudan's Darfur displaces 41000 in two months: UN

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A Sudanese family takes shelter under their donkey cart at the Kalma refugee camp for internally displaced people, south of the Darfur town of Nyala, Sudan. (AP/UNAMID)

A Sudanese family takes shelter under their donkey cart at the Kalma refugee camp for internally displaced people, south of the Darfur town of Nyala, Sudan. (AP/UNAMID)

Fighting between Sudanese government forces and rebels in parts of Darfur has displaced more than 41,000 people from their homes since late December, the UN said on Thursday.

“Aid organizations have assessed and verified the needs of 41,304 people displaced” by violence in North Darfur state and the Jebel Marra areas in the war-torn region, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its weekly bulletin.

The head of OCHA’s Sudan office said that the number of displaced people could be higher than the figures, which were collected between the last week of December and February 15.

“There are several localities, basically part of the Jebel Marra Massif, to which we don’t have access. We don’t know how many people have been affected” in those areas, Ivo Freijsen said.

Sudan’s military launched an offensive in Darfur in November in a bid to defeat insurgents who have been battling the government since 2003.

Jebel Marra is a hilly area in North Darfur where much of the fighting has taken place.

An army spokesman denied government troops carried out operations in the area in recent weeks.

“If there are any displacements, maybe it is as a result of previous fighting, more than one month ago. We ourselves never target civilians,” Colonel al-Sawarmy Khaled Saad said.

The Sudanese military launched its offensive — dubbed “Decisive Summer 2” — in November after the end of the rainy season that had rendered road in the region impassable.

Khartoum’s forces have also targeted insurgents in the Blue Nile and South Kordofan areas as part of the operation.

Insurgents in the western region of Darfur rebelled against the Khartoum government in 2003, complaining that they were being neglected and marginalized.

Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in the region.

Bashir seized power in a 1989 coup, but won a 2010 election that was criticized by observers for failing to meet international standards and was marred by opposition boycotts.

Some 300,000 people have been killed in the conflict in Darfur, and the region is home to more than two million internally displaced persons, according to the UN.

Fighting between government and rebels in Central Darfur during the same period last year displaced around 14,000 people, OCHA said.

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

U.S meddling to blame for ‘all Arab world sufferings’ – Sudan president

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Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir (Reuters / Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah)

Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir (Reuters / Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah)

by RT

The bloody conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Libya are the result of the interference by the US, which wants to gain control over the rich natural resources of those countries, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir told RT.

“The people in Sudan believe that the since the fall of the Soviet Union [in 1991], injustice and oppression has prevailed around the globe as the US became the sole hegemon and began running things with impunity in many regions, including ours,” Bashir said.

In his interview with RT’s Arabic Channel, the Sudanese president labeled Washington’s policies in Middle East and North Africa as “harmful and destructive.”

“Just look at what’s now happening in Iraq and how it spread to Syria. All the suffering that is going in the Arab world is the work of the US,” he said.

The events in Iraq, Syria and Libya “are the result of the US, the Western meddling; it’s a manifestation of colonialism, which has just one aim to it – establishing control over the region and its natural resources,” Bashir said.

Sudan is constantly coming under pressure from international organizations “due to its firm stance, which is antagonistic toward US policies in the region,” he said.

In the most recent example, Bashir pointed to a UN/African Union Mission investigation into the claims by opposition radio that 200 female residents of the village of Tabit in war-torn Darfur region were raped in November.

The first inquiry revealed that no such crime took place, but “the hegemon [the US] was dissatisfied with such a conclusion and ordered another check,” the president said.

“As for the second investigation, we’re confident that there’s already a report on it prepared beforehand in Washington or New York,” he stressed.

The Tabit investigation, as well as the ongoing International Criminal Court (ICC) inquiry into genocide and crimes against humanity during the War in Darfur “are attempts to break the will of the Sudanese,”Bashir said.

“We’re talking about regime change in Sudan to put in power the new regime that would obey the West,”he said.

The president also called the ICC in The Hague “one of the tools of neo-colonialism, which is trying to [subdue] smaller countries, especially, the ones in Africa.”

“This court is based in Europe, but it only passes judgment on the Africans,” Bashir said.

The war between the government and the militias, accusing the regime of oppression against Sudan’s non-Arabs, began in the country’s western region of Darfur in 2003.

According to UN estimates, the bloody conflict took over 300,000 lives and saw 2 million people displaced. Sudanese authorities put the death toll at around 10,000.

Bashir has been re-elected three times since becoming Sudan’s president since in a 1989 bloodless coup.

In November, he announced that he’ll run for office again in the next election, which scheduled to take place in the country in April.

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