'Gross human rights violations' in Sudan
Alarming reports of gross human rights violations continue to emerge from Sudan, said Amnesty International in a report issued on February 19.
"There are especially disturbing reports of mass killings in the remote Nuba Mountains — where the government is engaged in military action which appears to amount to 'ethnic cleansing'," said the organisation.
"In the remote war zones of southern and western Sudan, where the government apparently feels free from international scrutiny, the authorities are flagrant in their disregard for human rights."
The most recent reports claim that hundreds of civilians were extrajudicially executed in the Nuba Mountains in late December 1992 and early January 1993.
In the south, the authorities have still not accounted for more than 100 men arrested in Juba in mid-1992 who have since "disappeared". Hundreds of people were reportedly extrajudicially executed in Juba as government forces "mopped up" after incursions by the armed opposition Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).
In the major cities of northern Sudan, there is a continuing pattern of detention without charge or trial of government critics. Amnesty International knows the names of 250 political detainees who have been held without charge in Khartoum alone during the past year.
The SPLA, now split in three, is also responsible for serious human rights abuses, said Amnesty. In January 1992 forces loyal to the SPLA (Nasir group) deliberately and arbitrarily killed 87 civilians at Pagarau in Bahr al-Ghazal state. In September 1992, SPLA (Torit group) forces murdered three foreign aid workers and a journalist.