Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed, found beheaded

Editor, Previously Persecuted for Controversial Articles, Kidnapped And Beheaded
Committee to Protect Journalists (New York)
PRESS RELEASE
September 7, 2006

"The Committee to Protect Journalists deplores the kidnapping and beheading in Sudan of a newspaper editor. Masked gunmen bundled Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed, editor-in-chief of the private daily Al-Wifaq, into a car outside his home in east Khartoum late Tuesday. Police found his severed head next to his body today in the south of the capital. His hands and feet were bound, according to a CPJ source and news reports.
"August 30, Khartoum police beat Ibrahim Muhammad, a cameraman for the Qatar-based satellite channel Al-Jazeera, and seized his camera during a banned demonstration against rises in fuel and sugar prices, Reuters reported. On August 26, a court in El-Fasher charged Paul Salopek, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Chicago Tribune, along with his Chadian interpreter and driver, with espionage, illegally disseminating information, and writing "false news." Tomo Kriznar, a Slovenian freelance photographer was detained in Darfur on July 19 and sentenced on August 14 to two years in prison on what CPJ considers a spurious charge of espionage."...

Sudan cracks down on protests
By Opheera McDoom
September 06, 2006
Swissinfo

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - "Sudanese security forces on Wednesday fired tear gas and beat demonstrators protesting against price increases for basic goods, and a journalist was found beheaded in a further sign of rising political tensions.

The protests were organised despite calls for national unity from President Omar Hassan al-Bashir as Khartoum faces off with the international community over its refusal to allow a United Nations peacekeeping force into the war-torn Darfur region."

Gunmen behead Sudanese editor KuwaitTimes
September 07, 2006

KHARTOUM: The chief editor of a Sudanese independent daily who provoked a furore by publishing an article denounced as blasphemous was found dead a day after being abducted by unknown gunmen, police said yesterday. A group of masked gunmen abducted Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed, the editor-in-chief of Al-Wifaq, from his home in the east of Khartoum late Tuesday. His body was found in another part of the city a day later, said a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
In May 2005, scores of Sudanese gathered in front of the capital's courthouse demanding a death sentence for Ahmed for insulting Islam's prophet, by republishing an article from the Internet that questioned the parentage of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). The Al-Wifaq daily was fined 8,000,000 Sudanese pounds (about US$3,200) for the outcry it prompted in this conservative African Muslim nation.

Sudan violence escalates as Darfur deadline nears
September 06, 2006
CBC

According to this article, CBC reporter David McGuffin assigned in Khartoum experienced police violence the same day Taha's body was recovered.

...Accusations of genocide

Mark Hanis of the Genocide Intervention Network said there were good reasons from the government's point of view to spurn the international community.

"They're worried that the peacekeeping force is going to protect the Darfurian people that they're trying to eliminate in this genocide; and the second reason is they're afraid they're going to be held accountable and possibly sentenced in the international criminal courts," Hanis said.

Kidnapped Sudanese editor found slain
By MohammedOsman Seattle
Post Intelligencer
AP Writer

Press release, Reporters Without Borders :
The Editor of Khartoum paper kidnapped and beheaded

"We express our solidarity with our colleagues in Khartoum, for whom this cowardly murder is a harsh ordeal. The reforms introduced to restore peace and justice to Sudan will be put at risk if nothing is done to punish this crime," said Reporters Without Borders. "The Sudanese authorities must do their utmost to see that light is shed on this tragedy, so that both the perpetrators and those who instigated it are brought to trial," the organisation added."

The murder of Mohammed Taha was a clear message to thos like Taha, an Islamist, who are in favour of the UN presence in Darfur.

So what is IslamOnLine saying on Sudan and the need for troops to address the ongoing genocide?

Resolution 1706 Divides Sudan: Analysts
By Ahmed Fathi, IOL Correspondent.

KHARTOUM — "UN Security Council Resolution 1706 approving the deployment of UN troops in Sudan's troubled Darfur region despite fierce Sudanese opposition is a bid to divide Sudan and entrench US interests in Africa, Egyptian experts said.

"The US-backed Darfur troops are nothing but an international military alliance to divide Sudan by force and take away the Darfur region from the Sudanese authority," Ambassador Abdullah Al-Ashaal, a former assistant to Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit, told IslamOnline.net Saturday, September 2"...

Sudan must accept U.N. force for Darfur - France
September 07, 2006

Reuters PARIS - "The humanitarian crisis in Darfur must be tackled and Khartoum is going to have to accept the presence of a United Nations force in the region, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said on Thursday."

"There is a humanitarian drama going on in Darfur. It is terrible, disastrous," Douste-Blazy told reporters. "We don't have the right in today's world to let these women, children and civilians die. It's not possible"...

Of course, while the West wants to see the UN troops in Sudan, the Arab League support AU - Africa Union - troops to do "peace keeping" in Sudan, although their troops have been immobile in Khartoum, unable to do anything.

Arab League supports Sudan's plan to deploy troops in Darfur
People's Daily on line,
China publication

"The Cairo-based Arab League Wednesday passed a resolution supporting Sudan's plan to deploy the government troops in its western region of Darfur, said AL Secretary General Amr Moussa..."

Moussa encourages dialogue, yes, but the AL position is that only Sudanes troops and AU forces can be in Sudan, no UN troops. Our guess is that the AL wants to see the ethnic cleansing job completed.

The Arab and African justification for this position seems odiously racist: Only Africans can help Africans meaning if most black Christians die because they want no Western presence there, so be it! The color of the skin of those protecting the population matters more than the lives of the entire Christian community of Sudan.

We can also fairly expect China and Russia to veto the deployment of UN troops.

More info on Sudan.

Regarding history, it is interesting also to see the official persective on Sudan's history by Sudan, click on Society & Culture: Historical perspective: Sudan's official website

Wikipedia - Sudan

Early History of Sudan

Three ancient Kushite kingdoms existed consecutively in northern Sudan. This region was also known as Nubia and Meroe, and these civilizations flourished mainly along the Nile River from the first to the sixth cataracts. The kingdoms were influenced by, and in turn influenced Pharaonic Egypt. In ancient times, Nubia was ruled by Egypt from 1500 BC, to around 1000BC when the Napatan Dynasty was founded under Alara and regained independance for the kingdom of Kush although borders fluctuated greatly.

Christianity was introduced by missionaries in the 3rd or 4th century, and much of the region was converted to Coptic Christianity. Islam was introduced in 640 AD with an influx of Muslim Arabs who had conquered Egypt, although the Christian Kingdoms of Nubia managed to persist until the 15th Century.

A merchant class of Arabs became economically dominant in feudal Sudan. An important kingdom in Nubia was the Makuria, which reached its height in the 8th-9th centuries, and was of the Melkite Christian faith, unlike its Coptic neighbours, Nobatia and Alodia...

2006 in Sudan:

Just as the decades long North-South civil war was reaching a resolution, a new rebellion in the western region of Darfur began in early 2003. The rebels accused the central government of neglecting the Darfur region, although there is uncertainty regarding the objectives of the rebels and whether they merely seek an improved position for Darfur within Sudan or outright secession. Both the government and the rebels have been accused of atrocities in this war, although most of the blame has fallen on Arab militias (Janjaweed) allied with the government. The rebels have alleged that these militias have been engaging in ethnic cleansing in Darfur, and the fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands of people, many of them seeking refuge in neighboring Chad. The government claimed victory over the rebels after capturing Tine, a town on the border with Chad, in early 2004 the violence continued. But as of 2006, the War in Darfur continues with the situation getting worse.

There has been signed a Darfur Peace Agreement between some of the parties in Darfur. This agreement is supervised by African Union Mission in Sudan(AMIS).

The people in Darfur are predominately black and Muslim, whereas Janjaweed militias are black Arab Muslims.

CIA - FactBook on Sudan

SUDAN - U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE


Views:
SUDAN STILL BLEEDS
by Amir Taheri
New York Post
May 10, 2005


Exerpts

[...In recent months, Khartoum has accepted U.N. Security Council resolutions dealing with the 21-year-old war in the south and signed a peace agreement with Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA-SPLM). The regime has also agreed to cooperate with the United Nations to put an end to the year-long genocide in Darfur. Other diplomatic gestures have reinforced the impression that Khartoum is truly heading for change.

The truth, however, is quite different:

* The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between Khartoum and the SPLM concerning the south remains largely a dead letter.

* The U.N. peacekeeping mission exists only on paper, with no timetable set for its deployment on the ground.

* Tension is growing over the southern oilfields — while elaborate plans for sharing oil revenues, to help rebuild the war-shattered south where most oilfields are located, have been back-burnered.

* The regime's promise to disband some of its most vicious security organs hasn't been fulfilled — and there is, as yet, no sign of releasing political prisoners on any significant scale.

* The regime has also breached the peace agreement by repeatedly missing deadlines fixed for drafting a new democratic constitution as the first step toward free and pluralist elections.

* In a clear sign that the regime intends to retain a significant war-making capacity in the south, a stream of military personnel and materiel still flows into the two mainly affected provinces. And Khartoum has speeded up arms deliveries to the so-called Lord's Army in next-door Uganda as part of a scheme to use that band of cut-throats as a mercenary force in the south...]
Read it all here.