Prominent Sudan researcher and analyst Prof. Eric Reeves has urged the international community to “warn Khartoum not to use excessive force” in response to Sudanese Disobedience Day scheduled for December 19.
In an article published yesterday inandnbsp;The World Post, Prof. Reeves calls on “the international community, particularly those nations seeking rapprochement with the Khartoum regime, must put this survivalist cabal on notice that brutal repressive actions will not be tolerated and that there will be serious consequences if the regime again issues ‘shoot to kill’ orders, as it did in September 2013”.
He asserts : “A failure to warn Khartoum—now—against violently repressive actions will be, in effect, a countenancing of those actions. Unctuous expressions of ‘concern’ or ‘condemnation’ after the fact will be of little use to those in Sudanese civil society injured or killed by actions of the sort we have seen on too many occasions. Hundreds were killed and many times that number wounded in September 2013.”
Prof Reeves singles-out Germany, France, Italy and the UK as “the countries that have most aggressively pursued improved relations with Khartoum; they bear a special responsibility to ensure that peaceful protestors and those engaged in principled civil disobedience are not victims of violence in their effort to secure the democratization of Sudan.”
He says that “the [US] Obama administration also bears a similar responsibility…”
As reported by Radio Dabangaandnbsp;on Sunday, a large number of Sudanese political forces and civil society members have announced their full support to the civil disobedience action scheduled for the 19th of December.
Eric Reeves is a Professor of English Language and Literature at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts in the USA. He is a Senior Fellow at Harvard University’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights. He has spent the past 14 years working full-time as a Sudan researcher and analyst, publishing extensively both in the US and internationally. As in the article mentioned above, he often refers to Radio Dabanga as a source. He has testified several times before the US Congress, has lectured widely in academic settings, and has served as a consultant to a number of human rights and humanitarian organisations operating in Sudan.