SUDAN:Officials in Darfur told a public rally that the region will be "the graveyard for the enemies of Sudan", reports Rob Crillyin Khartoum
GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS in Darfur promised to turn the region into a graveyard yesterday in a series of protests against the International Criminal Court (ICC) yesterday as Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir claimed the court had no jurisdiction in his country.
The charges the ICC had laid against him were lies, he said, in his first comments since the court accused him of genocide and war crimes.
"From the beginning we said we are not a member of the court . . . the court has no jurisdiction over Sudan," Mr Bashir said. "Whoever has visited Darfur, met officials and discovered their ethnicities and tribes . . . will know that all of these things [including ethnic cleansing] are lies," he added.
Hundreds of people in the capital Khartoum demonstrated outside western embassies as popular opinion rallied around the president.
An angry crowd in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, sent a warning to a joint United Nations and African peacekeeping force.
About 1,000 people chanting, "We don't need Ocampo, we don't need the ICC," were addressed by the local deputy wali, or mayor.
"We say to you, President al-Bashir, that the people of Darfur will go with you wherever you go, and Darfur will be the graveyard for the enemies of Sudan," he said.
Seven members of an embattled peacekeeping force were killed last week in what is believed to have been a Janjaweed ambush.
Other speakers accused the international court of pursuing a "conspiracy against peace in Darfur" and made reference to bloodshed and defiance.
Official reaction in the capital Khartoum was designed for international consumption.
Ali Osman Taha, Sudan's vice- president, denounced the evidence assembled by Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor, for misrepresenting a complex conflict between tribes over pasture and water as genocide. "He just brought these allegations from the internet and from people who have not been to Darfur," he said.
Minutes earlier about 200 demonstrators marched past the government building where journalists were assembling for a press conference. It was one of a series of small protests that took place across the city.
About 30 women gathered outside the British embassy, before handing in a petition condemning the action of the court. A similar protest was held outside the United Nations headquarters in the city. Student leaders are planning a mass demonstration today.
Meanwhile, officials from the African Union said arrest warrants would undermine attempts to find peace in Darfur and cement progress in southern Sudan, where a decades-long civil war ended in 2005. "The AU's position is that nothing should be done that might jeopardise the peace processes in Sudan," said El-Ghassim Wane, spokesman for the AU's main executive body.
"Consultations are under way for an emergency meeting of the peace and security council to be held probably in Addis Ababa at a ministerial level." It leaves the country on a knife edge.
Aid agencies pulled back non-essential staff from Darfur to the capital Khartoum ahead of yesterday's announcement. Many were ordered to stay at home for fear of anti-western demonstrations.
"The biggest short-term concern is to our programmes and our ability to work here safely," said one humanitarian worker in Khartoum. "Movement will be limited for the first few days so it's disruptive in terms of our work.
"Long-term, there's a fear of how it will impact on the security situation in Darfur and in the south, whether it will lead to more fighting, closure and harassment of camps and whether rebels will use it as an excuse to step up attacks."
There were few white faces in the smart new coffee shops which have sprung up to cater for Khartoum's humanitarian workers.
Dependants of UN staff have been flown out of the country amid heightened rumours of rebel assaults or Islamic terrorism.
But it was business as usual elsewhere. The city's sand-edged streets were crammed with traffic and shops opened as normal.
Many residents, including people with little love for Mr Bashir, said the ICC had no right to interfere in Sudanese politics.
"I support the opposition but I cannot accept what the ICC is doing," said Al Siir Sabil, a taxi driver. "This is an indignity for all the people of Sudan. We are the people who should choose who our president is."
However, Alfred Taban, editor-in-chief of the Khartoum Monitor newspaper, welcomed the role of international justice.
"This is good for the people of Darfur," he said. "Indictments put pressure on the Sudanese government and we have seen before that it only acts when it is under pressure."