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English edition -2nd quarter 1998
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Massacre of the conscripts
| Our readers will probably remember that in June 1997 the results of
the final examinations for admission at the University in Sudan were not
made public. The Army had got hold of the lists and declared that all those
eventually qualifying for admission were first bound to make their military
service before they were informed whether they had been selected or not.
Less than half the candidates concerned presented themselves at the recruiting
offices , the rest simply ignored those instructions.. A number of those
new recruits were sent to the front line in the East or the South with
only a very rudimentary military preparation. Owing to their lack of battle
experience, the casualties among them were alarmingly high. The President
of the Republic highly praised their courage and publicly declared that
they were martyrs who suffered for the common cause and were worthy of
the eternal happiness awaiting them in the life beyond. But the families
were upset and started airing their feelings of disapproval openly in public.
Street protests held by mothers were brutally broken up by the riot police.
Some women were detained, taken to the police station and condemned to
receive twenty strokes after a summary judgement. A demonstration staged
by lawyers met with the same fate. The popular demonstration that took
place on December 1st 1997 before the United Nations Headquarters, when
the protesters wanted to take a letter of complaints to the Secretary General,
was squashed with the renewed brutality by the riot police in spite
of the fact that they were battling the crowds before a gallery of foreigners.
The police hunted the protesters down the streets and into market places
to flush out the young men in age for conscription in order to force them
into the armed forces and send them to military training camps. The presence
of foreigners watching the proceedings did not cramp their style.
One of those camps, at Alyafoun, near Khartoum, on the Western bank of the Blue Nile, had a muster of 2,100 conscripts. Just at that time the feast of the sheep, Eid el Kebir, came around. This feast consists of four days of public holiday, during which it is the custom to visit one another. The recruits training in this particular camp asked their commanding officer leave to go and visit their families; Their request was turned down. You will find further in this article an account of what happened according to the testimony of the opposition, and according to the official version of the facts. President Bechir decreed at once that the conscription of the secondary school students was to be suspended, and that the university students would serve in the army only after completing their studies at the university. His army will thus be short of 60,000 recruits a year. The President is not very happy about this development, but there was no other way to defuse an outbreak of popular anger. |
| (V.S. April 1998) Fomalhaut |