By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, October 25, updated below -- As the UN Security Council convenes Monday about Sudan, the issues are many but the follow through, especially about Darfur, is sorely lacking.
Internally Displaced People with whom the Council met earlier in the month in the Abu Shouk camp have been arrested and harassed.
While the UN Secretariat has been asked to brief the Council about the issue on Monday morning, as of late last week UN acting Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq told the Press the UN still wasn't sure it had happened.
Meanwhile the UN's Darfur chief Ibrahim Gambari still prepared to turn over five supporters of Fur rebel Abdel Wahid al-Nur to the government of Omar al-Bashir, indicted for genocide and war crimes.
While the leaked documents obtained and published by Inner City Press show Gambari seeking only to get a promise from Bashir not to execute the five, no mention is made of torture.
But Bashir's government is charged with torture, and the UN has looked away, as in the case of the Darfuri student beaten to death, not seen for days by the UN in the morgue in Khartoum.
And even as to execution, a resident of Kalma camp has been sentenced to death by hanging.
While the UN insist that Kalma is not be dismantled, just as it says it has seen nothing “out of the ordinary” in the Shangil Tobaya camp the Council was told not to visit, by the Sudanese authorities as well as Gambari's UNAMID, it is reported that the government is using LJM supporters in Kalma to intimidate those staying there to leave.
UNAMID's spokespeople Kemal Saiki and Chris Cycmanick have stopped answering any of the Inner City Press' questions, which the UN in New York reflexively says should be submitted to UNAMID in El Fashir. What are these people being paid to do?
The money, it seems, is being spent on a Lear Jet for Gambari, who has been in New York since Friday across to Mission sources. Nice to spend a weekend in New York City -- but at this time? And he did not attend the October 25 Security Council meeting -- "on leave," Inner City Press was told.
Gambari's counterpart with respect to North - South Sudan, Haile Menkerios, last week told the press that he has only heard about Khartoum's troop build up on the border through media reports. But it emerges that the issue has been raised at least three times this year in the the very ceasefire commission Menkerios chairs.
Supporters of both Menkerios and Gambari say the two are close to the government in Khartoum. Perhaps -- but at what cost? And to what end? Watch this site.
Note: Sources in Darfur tell Inner City Press that more people have been arrested, and others have had their movement restricted including (arrested) Mohammed Hassan Isshag, Ali Ibrahim Idriss, Mansour Mousa Tajeldin, Abdul Rahman Adam Yahiya, Abdel Aziz Eissa, Adam Hamid Shareif, Abaker Ahmed Abdella, Ommda Salih and Abdel Rahman Ibrahim Abdul Gaadeir; (movement restricted to El Fasher) Ommda Ateim Ahmed, Tajeldin Mousa Ommda and Khadeeja Adam Bashar.
Update of 10:13 am -- at the briefing on arrested IDPs, Brooke Anderson reps the US; with Susan Rice not here, seems US won't speak at stakeout on arrests. Will UK Lyall Grant?
Update of 10:24 am -- #Sudan PR #Dafaala El Haj Ali tells #InnerCityPress, no one was arrested, we challenge them to produce names. Says he will do a stakeout. Will US?
