Sudan Expels South Sudanese Students for Celebrating the Capturing of Heglig by SPLA
Sudan expels southern police cadets
South Sudanese students who rejoiced at their country’s armed occupation of Sudan’s main oilfield have been expelled from a police college in Khartoum, the interior minister said on Tuesday.
“We dismissed Southern students from the police college because they celebrated after Heglig’s occupation,” Ibrahim Mahmud Ahmadtold parliament.
He did not say how many were expelled.
The action comes after South Sudan eight days ago invaded Sudan’s main oilfield of Heglig, along the border.
One dismissed student, a woman, said there were a total of 23 male and female candidates in her class. She did not know the number of cadets in two other classes.
“In the ladies’ residence I didn’t see any celebration but maybe it happened in the men’s residence,” said the student who asked not to be identified.
Fighting broke out last month between the armies of Khartoum and Juba along their disputed border, but the clashes escalated last week with waves of aerial bombardment hitting the South, whose troops seized Heglig.
The clashes are the worst since South Sudan won independence last July after a 22-year civil war that ended in 2005, and have heightened nationalist feeling in the north where an estimated half-million ethnic Southerners remain.
Since April 9 they have had to either move South or formalise their status in the north.
Students are allowed to stay for their studies.
Khartoum dismissed southern police and other members of the civil service before South Sudan’s independence, meaning those officer-candidates who have been expelled would not have been given police jobs in the north anyway.
http://news.yahoo.com/sudan-expels-southern-police-cadets-minister-000041341.html
5,000 South Sudanese forced out of Darfuri camp
Witnesses told Radio Dabanga their camp was completely looted yesterday including the clothes they were wearing.
They said today the militants came back and indiscriminately burned down their homes forcing the traumatised camp residents out into the surrounding areas.
Sudanese citizens from neighbouring villages went out to help the camp residents and many took families into their own homes.
The razed camp was reportedly set up in 1991 and was home to more than 5,000 people of South Sudanese origin.
The witnesses said this attack came about after president Bashir gave orders for citizens to mobilise for jihad against rebels.
Sudan says cost no bar to recapture of oil region
By Yara Bayoumy and Alexander Dziadosz | ReutersNAIROBI/KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Sudan said on Tuesday the cost of a full-blown conflict with South Sudan would not deter it from recapturing the disputed Heglig oilfield, and that newly tapped oilfields would help to sustain its struggling economy.
South Sudan took control of the contested oil-producing Heglig region last week, prompting Sudan’s parliament to brand its former civil war foe an “enemy” on Monday and to call for a swift recapture of the flat savanna region.
Both countries’ faltering economies are likely to be important factors in the conflict’s outcome.
“Despite the high cost of the war, despite the destruction that the war can cause … our options are very limited. We can tolerate some sacrifice, until we can liberate our land,” Sudan’s ambassador to Kenya, Kamal Ismail Saeed, said.
“So from our side, yes, it is expensive but that doesn’t deter us or that doesn’t stop us from exerting all effort to liberate our land,” he told reporters in Nairobi.
“We have been in war without oil for several years and we survived … As a matter of fact … the good news (is) we have developed other sources and fields of oil and that will really compensate our loss.”
Fighting over oil payments and territory has withered the combined crude output of both countries.
The Heglig field is vital to Sudan’s economy because it accounted for half the 115,000 barrels per day output that remained in its control when South Sudan seceded in July. The field’s output has stopped due to the fighting, officials say.
The landlocked South had already closed its 350,000 bpd output after failing to agree how much it should pay to export via Sudan’s pipelines, a Red Sea port and other facilities.
The latest clashes have also dampened hopes that Sudan and South Sudan can reach a deal soon on disputed issues such as demarcation of their 1,800-km (1,200-mile) border, division of debt and the status of citizens in each other’s territory.
The loss of Heglig, a shock to many Sudanese, has also stirred tensions in the north. Sudan’s interior minister said on Tuesday the police college had dismissed its South Sudanese students after “their violation of police regulations and their celebration of the occupation of Heglig”.
U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said she was alarmed by the South’s “unwarranted” occupation of Heglig and urged both sides to halt the violence, including the North’s bombing campaign against the South.
“I condemn the indiscriminate aerial bombing by Sudanese forces in civilian areas in South Sudan, including in Mayom and Bentiu in Unity State, resulting in the deaths of at least 8 civilians and many injuries since Saturday,” she said in a statement.
“In the past week we have seen an intensification of the use of Antonovs as well as jetfighters dropping bombs and launching rocket attacks, including in areas dangerously close to the offices of international organizations. Such deplorable attacks must stop immediately.”
South Sudan’s military (SPLA) spokesman said its positions were bombed on Monday, but no clashes were reported on Tuesday.
“We are aware they are trying to advance, and the SPLA is ready to receive them,” spokesman Philip Aguer said, describing the conflict as a “limited war”. Sudan’s army spokesman was not immediately available to comment.
NEW OILFIELDS
Saeed insisted Khartoum could weather the latest conflict, which has sent food prices soaring and hit the currency as officials try to make up for the sudden loss in revenues.
He said production from new fields in the west of the Kordofan region, in Darfur and in the states of White Nile and Blue Nile would offset much of the loss of Heglig’s output.
“We used to produce 115,000 barrels a day before the attack, we lost about 40,000, and now we’ll get another 30,000.”
South Sudan insists Heglig is rightfully part of the South and says it will not withdraw its troops unless the United Nations deploys a neutral force to monitor a ceasefire. Saeed said that was unacceptable.
“They have two options: either to withdraw very quickly or withdraw. We will reserve the right to use all means at our access to kick them out of there, and we will do it,” he said.
“They will be thrown out of there very soon.”
Pillay and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed alarm over reports of a buildup of militia forces in the disputed Abyei border region.
The U.N. statement did not say where the reports were from or give details but called it a violation of a June agreement in which both sides said they would withdraw forces from the area.
Ban called on Khartoum to “ensure the full and immediate withdrawal of these elements from the area”.
Abyei, which is prized for its fertile grazing land and produces some oil, was a major battleground during Sudan’s civil war and is symbolically potent for both sides. Both countries lay claim to it.
Khartoum seized Abyei in May last year after a southern attack on an army convoy, triggering an exodus of tens of thousands of civilians. The Security Council authorised the deployment of 3,800 U.N. peacekeepers in Abyei in June.
Some 2 million people died in Sudan’s civil war, waged for all but a few years between 1955 and 2005 over conflicts of ideology, ethnicity, oil and religion.
(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations and Tom Miles in Geneva; Writing by Yara Bayoumy and Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by Jon Hemming)
http://news.yahoo.com/u-n-ban-alarmed-militia-buildup-sudan-border-084612241.html
South Sudan defiant after week of fighting with Sudan
By Waakhe Simon Wudu | AFP South Sudan’s army vowed Tuesday to hold their positions in a contested oil field seized from Khartoum’s army, one week after the outbreak of bitter fighting that has raised fears of a wider war.
Despite air strikes and a reported counter-attack by Khartoum’sSudan Armed Forces (SAF) to retake the disputed Heglig oil field, the South’s Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) said it would not withdraw from the battle zone.
“If they advance, definitely SPLA is ready to fight back and repulse them. … The SPLA is ready for them outside Heglig,” Southern army spokesman Philip Aguer told reporters.
The hostilities are the worst since South Sudan’s independence fromSudan in July, and world powers have condemned the fighting, as fears grow that clashes could spread beyond the current border conflict.
In Geneva, UN human rights chief Navi Pillay urged both sides to halt the hostilities, warning of the humanitarian consequences of the conflict.
“There is still time to pull back from the brink and bring all parties to the table to negotiate diplomatic solutions to disagreements over borders, oil, citizenship and other crucial issues,” said Pillay in a statement.
“I call on all parties to work to avoid an escalation of armed confrontation, bearing in mind the dire human rights and humanitarian consequences for civilians,” she added.
Fighting broke out last month between Khartoum and Juba in the Heglig oil field — key to Sudan’s already struggling economy, as it supplied around half of its oil production — before an escalation of violence on April 10.
The South has reportedly placed tanks and artillery around oil infrastructure in Heglig, which both sides say belongs to them. Aguer said Khartoum had damaged wells as they sought to dislodge Southern troops by aerial bombardment.
“The border is still fragile, tension is still very high,” Aguer added. “The SAF continue to bomb indiscriminately. … On Tuesday they bombed one of the oil wells outside Heglig, it is still burning.”
Khartoum has launched a wave of air raids on Southern border areas, killing several civilians and hitting a UN peacekeeper base on Monday in the village of Mayom, in the South’s oil-producing Unity state.
The United Nations confirmed the attack, although Sudan denied the air strike.
However, the region appeared calmer Tuesday, with “no reports of fighting so far”, said Gideon Gatpan, Unity state’s information minister.
World powers have also called for restraint and voiced deep concern at the escalating violence.
Khartoum seeks the South’s unconditional withdrawal from Heglig. But Juba has said it will not pull back unless Khartoum removes its troops from the contested Abyei region nearby, among other conditions.
Leaders on both sides have also exchanged angry rhetoric — accusing each other of starting the violence and of wanting war — with Khartoum’s parliament on Monday voting the government ofSouth Sudan an enemy, a move dismissed by Juba.
“They have declared war against the people of the Republic of South Sudan … they have declared jihad war against the infidels of South Sudan,” Southern Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjaminsaid Tuesday.
“I think this is a crazy decision. Our position is we consider the Sudanese people as brothers and sisters. … We don’t see them as an enemy.”
Questions are being raised in Khartoum over how easily Southern forces managed to seize Sudan’s main oil field, dealing another blow to an economy mired in crisis.
The Sudanese military is already severely stretched in the face of the major insurgency in South Kordofan, a smaller uprising in Blue Nile, and ongoing fighting in the war-ravaged Darfur region.
Some two million people died in Sudan’s 1983-2005 civil war, one of Africa’s longest, before the peace deal that opened the way to South Sudan’s independence.
When the South separated, Khartoum lost about 75 percent of its oil production and billions of dollars in revenue, leaving the Heglig area as its main oil centre.
http://news.yahoo.com/sudan-parliament-brands-juba-enemy-042146751.html
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