The Sudan government has blocked three human rights activists from attending the International Criminal Court review conference in Kampala.

by David Rupiny 

According to sources, the three Sudanese activists are Salim Mahmoud Osman, a respected human rights lawyer and recipient of the European parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, Mariam Alsadig Almahadi, an opposition politician and activists, and Professor Albukhari Abdalla Aljaali, a leading international justice lawyer.

The trio were reportedly detained at Khartoum Airport as they were about to board a flight to Uganda. They were reportedly questionedand detained until after their flight had left. Their passports were also thought to have been confiscated.

Although the three were subsequently allowed to leave the airport, they have been asked to report to the national security offices in a week’s time to answer questions and to discuss the recovery of their passports.

A fourth activist, Dr Amin Mekki Medani, a renowned Sudanese human rights lawyer and former United Nations official, decided not to travel as a result of the incident.

Three rights groups – the African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies (ACJPS), the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI), have roundly condemned Khartoum’s decision to block the activists from attending the conference.

The Sudanese activists had been invited to Kampala by the three organisations in order to participate in a public reflection on the political, social, legal and humanitarian impact of the engagement of the ICC in Sudan.

According to the rights groups, the discussion “was designed as an opportunity to ensure that Sudanese voices would be inserted into the official process of stock-taking underway at the Kampala Review Conference.”

“We call on the government of Sudan to immediately return the activists’ passports and to allow them to travel in accordance with their constitutionally and internationally recognized human rights,” said Osman Hummaida, executive director of ACJPS.

Hummaida pointed out that the right to leave is a fundamental human right guaranteed by Article 42(2) of the Sudan Constitution and Article 12(2) of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights.
Dismas Nkunda, the co-director of IRRI, wondered what the government of Sudan is afraid of:

“The session in Kampala is an important opportunity to improve the functioning of the Rome Statute, an instrument to which Sudan is a party.”

President Omar al-Bashir, indicted by the ICC on charges of war crimes committed in Darfur, last year endorsed the principles of the Rome Statute in the Great lakes Protocol on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crimes of Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity.

In the absence of the Sudanese campaigners, the Kampala discussion will go ahead as scheduled, with Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai as special guest.