Sudan vowed on Wednesday it would not work with the International Criminal Court (ICC) as thousands of protestors massed in Khartoum to protest the arrest warrant against President Omar al-Bashir.
Security was beefed up around foreign embassies amid fear of reprisals by al-Bashir supporters, while diplomats urged expatriates to avoid public places and stock up on essential supplies.
The government remained defiant after the ICC announced the warrant against al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity including extermination, rape and pillaging — the first by the court against a sitting head of state.
”We will not deal with this court,” Justice Minister Abdel Basit Sabdarat told Al-Jazeera television. ”It has no jurisdiction, it is a political decision.”
”It is a flawed decision,” said Sudanese presidential spokesperson Mahjoub Fadul. ”We do not recognise it, nor the court that issued it and we do not care about it at all.”
Sudan ”absolutely rejects” the ICC arrest warrant for al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur, deputy foreign minister Ali Ahmed Karti told reporters in Cairo.
In Khartoum, banner-waving crowds massed on the banks of the Nile, chanting ”We love you President Bashir”.
”We will protect President Bashir with every drop of our blood,” chanted another group of demonstrators near Khartoum University.
One demonstrator, Fakri Osman, charged the West with hypocrisy, saying it had ”two weights, two measures”.
”We want a Sudanese solution to a Sudanese problem,” he told AFP.
Ahead of the announcement, the Sudanese army broadcast a stark warning on state radio against anyone trying to exploit the court’s decision.
”The armed forces will firmly deal with whoever cooperates with the so-called International Criminal Court, and uses it as a platform for political blackmail and for destabilising the security and stability of the country,” spokesperson Osman al-Aghbash said.
Tension mounting
Sudanese media predicted that Wednesday’s demonstration would be followed by larger rallies in al-Bashir’s northern power base later in the week.
On Tuesday, thousands paraded portraits of al-Bashir at the inauguration north of the capital of the largest hydro-electric project built on the Nile in 40 years, where the president dismissed the ruling as worthless.
”It will not be worth the ink it is written in,” he said.
Embassies asked their citizens to stay inside for fear of hostile protests.
”As a precaution in case of demonstrations which might inhibit movement, you are advised to maintain several days’ stock of food and water,” the British mission said.
Two military trucks were parked outside the French embassy, an AFP correspondent reported.
Some UN staff have been told to leave work early to avoid any potential demonstrations.
The medical aid organisation Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said it had pulled its expatriate staff out of Darfur after the Sudanese government ordered them to leave.
”The government of Sudan has ordered MSF to evacuate all of its international personnel from a certain number of projects in western and southern Darfur by March 4 at the latest,” MSF said.
An MSF official said about 70 people, including foreigners and Sudanese nationals who are not from Darfur, were pulled out on Tuesday from four towns.
The joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur (UNAMID) said its patrols are ”operating as normal”, but that its troops were ”closely monitoring the state of affairs throughout the area”.
However, sources within the mission said the situation was tense inside the western region.
”Our guys on the ground feel that there is tension. The Sudanese security forces are much more visible in Darfur,” said a UNAMID official.
There is concern among the international community that protestors could direct their anger at foreigners.
The United Nations employs some 32 000 people in Sudan including local staff, and thousands of other nationalities also live there.
Darfur’s most active rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), has threatened to step up efforts to topple al-Bashir if a warrant is issued and he fails to cooperate.
JEM leader Khalil Ibrahim said this week that his troops would retaliate if reprisals were taken against the people of Darfur.
”If they harm civilians, JEM will react,” Ibrahim said. ”Even in Khartoum, JEM is ready to protect the civilians.”
The group’s Cairo representative, Mohammed Hussein Sharif, hailed Wednesday’s announcement.
”We consider this day a great day for the Sudanese and Darfur people, and we renew our call on al-Bashir to appear before the court to plead his innocence, if he were indeed innocent,” he said.
International reaction
”The United States believes those who have committed atrocities should be brought to justice,” US State Department spokesperson Robert Wood said of the ICC decision during a trip by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Jerusalem.
China, the African Union and the Arab League suggest an indictment could destabilise the region, worsen the Darfur conflict and threaten a troubled peace deal between north Sudan and the semi-autonomous south — potentially rich in oil.
UN officials say as many as 300 000 people have been killed in the conflict in Sudan’s western Darfur region since 2003, while Khartoum says 10 000 have died.
A further 2,7 million people are estimated to have been uprooted by the conflict, which began when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government.
ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has accused al-Bashir of orchestrating a campaign of genocide in Darfur.
The court said its decision on Wednesday not to include a genocide charge could change ”if additional evidence is gathered by the prosecution” and it sought an amendment to the warrant.
Moreno-Ocampo has acknowledged that help from the more than 100 states backing the court would be urgently needed after the arrest warrant to enforce it.
Violence has spiked in Darfur in the months leading up to the ICC decision. Sudanese government officials have said they expect Darfur rebels to step up attacks after the court’s announcement.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit called on the UN Security Council to suspend al-Bashir’s arrest warrant, but Libyan envoy Ibrahim Dabbashi said before the ICC announcement there were no plans for an immediate council meeting.
The council has the power to defer ICC proceedings for up to one year at a time.
Moreno-Ocampo requested the warrant for al-Bashir last July, making him the third sitting head of state to be charged by an international court following Liberia’s Charles Taylor and Yugoslavia’s Slobodan Milosevic.
Both were forced from power and brought in front of international tribunals in the Hague. — AFP, Reuters