Daily Darfur: A not-so-happy 20 years of dictatorship to you, Omar al-Bashir

by Martha Heinemann Bixby · 2009-06-30 07:04:00 UTC
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Today marks the 20th anniversary of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir's Islamist-backed coup.

The BBC explains:

On 30 June 1989 he led fellow officers in a mutiny against Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi. General Bashir said in a televised communique that the coup was "to save the country from rotten political parties".

The coup was also aimed at preventing the signing of a peace treaty with John Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). General Bashir opposed the plan, which would have allowed secular law, instead of Sharia, in the south.

A letter to the Guardian has a nice little review of Bashir's time in office:

In the past two decades he has waged two civil wars, taking the lives of more than 2.6 million people, and displaced a further 6.5 million; he has funded murderous rebel armies in Chad and Uganda; and most recently he has been indicted by the international criminal court for five counts of crimes against humanity and two counts of war crime.

Of course, in the finest dictator style Bashir set out to defend himself in an interview with Sudan TV, saying he "saved" Sudan from "economic and military collapse".

Now just what do you get a dictator to celebrate his two decades in power?  Perhaps an e-card?

"Congratulations on staying in power after completely destroying your own country."

"I'm inspired by your callous disregard for human life."

Or better yet, an indictment for genocide?

Something not to celebrate

New stories are emerging about an attack on women at Khartoum University - a tragic example of the terror Bashir has wrought throughout Sudan (the women were discussing the legal merits of the International Criminal Court case against him).

The BBC has an interview with one of the students, who

told the Today programme that she and 30 other women were attacked on the university campus by men wielding metal bars. Correspondent Mike Thomson talks to one of the students, who has asked for her name not to be broadcast.

Photo from Sudan Watch, via the p.a.p. blog.

Martha Heinemann Bixby
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