Human Rights Developments

Defending Human Rights

The Role of the International Community

The closest thing to human rights defenders in government-controlled areas of Sudan were the independent attorneys (called advocates) who represent those charged with crimes against the state. Advocate Ghazi Suleiman, who frequently represented such defendants and who was head of the opposition bar association slate in December 1997, was detained after alleging the elections were rigged and sentenced to five months in jail for security crimes. This sentence, issued by a low-level Public Order Court, was overturned on appeal on jurisdictional grounds. Mustafa Abdel Gadir, who represented women demonstrators flogged in December 1997, was frequently detained but continued to speak out for his clients; when he protested to the court the beatings and subsequent lack of medical attention the women demonstrators received he was jailed overnight.

In two rebel areas, the Nuba Mountains and eastern Sudan, nongovernment (and nonrebel) human rights monitors monitored abuses. In the Nuba Mountains, Simon Noah, a Nuba human rights monitor from the Inter-Africa Group’s Sudan project, was killed in a government ambush in April. In the east, the newly-formed Human Rights Unit of Sudan Future Care Amal Trust was formed and began to collect testimonies of displaced and tortured victims from eastern Sudan.