May 16, 2009 (LONDON) — The Beja Congress of east Sudan issued an appeal to an international lawyers’ group to bring a case before the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Beja people collect water in the rebel-controlled area of eastern Sudan, near the border with Eritrea June 4, 2005. (Reuters).

Abu Amna, a representative of the organization, sent a statement to Sudan Tribune urging justice for a massacre allegedly committed in Port Sudan on January 28, 2005. On that day, 22 Beja citizens including women and children were shot dead and more than 400 injured during a peaceful protest.

Amna would like the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) to help bring a criminal case before the ICC. The IADL is an association founded in 1946 in Paris by lawyers who had participated in the Nuremberg Trials conducted against adherents to the regime of German leader Adolf Hitler.

Sudanese President Omer Al-Bashir is already wanted on seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC prosecutor further vows to charge him with three counts of genocide for targeting three ethnic groups in Darfur.

“It is not only in Darfur where Bashir and his government are practising war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Even in the north-eastern Sudan similar crimes are taking place, but not in that extent,” said Amna.

The Rome Statute, the treaty governing the ICC, allows the court prosecutor to “initiate investigations proprio motu on the basis of information on crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court,” which means he can take investigative action on his own.

But in the case of crimes committed in Darfur, Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo undertook the investigation because he was ordered to by the UN Security Council. The Beja Congress would like to see the lawyers’ association “to make it possible that the Security Council of the United Nations’ intervenes and refers the case to the ICC.”

On the day of January 28, 2005, government forces brought by plane from Khartoum committed the shooting in Port Sudan, said Amna. “The governor of the Red Sea state admitted later, that the demonstration of the Beja people was peaceful and that there was just a misunderstanding,” he said.

Amna pointed to the living conditions of the people inhabiting the region, saying “The sufferings of the Beja people in the north-eastern Sudan are just unbelievable.”

According to malnutrition indicators, eastern Sudan remains the worst of all the states in the country. In Red Sea state only 33 percent of people have access to safe drinking water, and maternal and child mortality rates are high.

Referring to these hardships, the Beja Congress figure said “The government in Khartoum left them alone, so that they can face their ultimate extinction in a few years.”

“The statistics reveal, that their number is drastically diminishing. Some Beja tribes have already completely vanished from earth. The rest may follow, if the civil societies and the global NGOs do not intervene.”

He added that the government accelerates this process by killing the Beja people using its security forces and land mines.

The Beja people have their own language and the Beja Congress is one of the oldest political bodies in the Sudan. The group took up arms in 1994.

(ST)