Having been in office since 1989, President Omar al-Bashir has said that his work has been ‘exhausting’. He has confirmed that he will be giving up office in 2020, at the end of the next elections and that his ‘current term will be his last’. Said Al-Bashir,” In 2020, there will be a new president and I will be an ex-president.”
A volatile country on the military front, Mr. Omar of Sudan has been under the scanner for several cases of genocide and war crimes, for which he was indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC). More recently, he has refuted claims that forces under his control had initiated abuse and violence against black Africans in villages in the Darfur region. This western region has been in conflict for nearly one and a half decade, with almost 2.5 million people being displaced from the area since 2003, out of which 100,000 cases have been noted since January this year alone—a statistic that has not been accepted as true by the premier.
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In this region, the Sudanese forces had reportedly commenced an offensive exercise in January in the mountains of Jebel Marra. However, the President had rubbished these claims, saying,” All these allegations are baseless, none of these reports are true. We challenge anyone to visit the areas recaptured by the armed forces, and find a single village that has been torched. In fact, there hasn’t been any aerial bombing.”
“As peace has returned to Darfur, I think that they (UN Forces) have no role to undertake and that’s why we want them to leave.”
Not only that, but President Omar commented that the displaced refugees from Darfur had fled to regions under the control of the government, proving that the state was not targeting its own citizens. “Only a very small number of people have been displaced and they have either reached our positions or [gone to] where the UN peacekeepers [Unamid] are deployed,” said the head of state. In addition, he provided the number of refugee camp inhabitants in Darfur to be only 160,000 as compared to the rather massive number of 2.5 million provided by the UN.
The accused President invalidated the ICC acts by calling it a ‘political tribunal’, adding that his fame as a good President could be noted by the sheer number of supporters that meet and greet him. He stated,” These are the same crowds I’m accused of having committed genocide and ethnic cleansing against. This is why I’ve defied the tribunal, and [why] I’ve been travelling freely around the world.”
A man who won with nearly a 94% vote in the April 2015 elections after being cut-off by the main opposition parties, has now said that he would be steeping down at the end of his current mandate. Even then, critics say that he has said so before and has never put his words into action.
Source: BBC
