Sudan Refuses Venue To Eritrean Opposition Groups

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Gedab News

Sudan Rejects Venue To Eritrean Opposition Groups

By Gedab News
Jun 29, 2006, 08:02 PST

The government of Sudan (GoS) has informed four Eritrean opposition organizations who had scheduled their congresses in Khartoum in July that it will not provide them with meeting venues in Sudan.

The organizations are the Eritrean Liberation Front-Revolutionary Council (ELF-RC), the Eritrean Liberation Front-National Congress (ELF-NC), the Eritrean Democratic Revolutionary Front (SeDeg’e) and the Eritrean People’s Movement (EPM.) ELF-RC was scheduled to hold it 6^th national congress and the latter three, collectively known as the Salvation Front, were scheduled to consolidate their unity to a final merger.

The government of Sudan’s decision was communicated to the representatives of the organizations without notice, long after the delegates, who were coming from the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, Asia and Ethiopia, had made travel arrangements to Khartoum, Sudan.

Reached by telephone, several leaders from the affected organizations refused to confirm or deny the news. Observers in Khartoum suspect that Sudan’s decision is a result of Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki’s visit to Khartoum on June 12, when he held a six-hour, closed-door session with Sudan’s President Omar Albashir and Vice President Ali Osman Taha.

Meanwhile, the Eritrean Democratic Party (EDP) will hold its congress in Milan, Italy between July 25th and 29^th.

Conversely, Gedab News has not received any information on whether the Eritrean Islamic Reform Movement (Al Islah), which is scheduled to hold its congress in Sudan in the coming months, has been declined by the government of Sudan.

Background

The neighboring country of Sudan has been hosting, and continues to host, tens of thousands of Eritreans who left their country to escape the Ethiopian occupation forces and, more recently, the policies of the government of Eritrea.

Even as the people of Sudan have shown admirable and consistent generosity to the people of Eritrea, successive governments of Sudan have taken politically expedient measures that have negatively impacted liberation fronts and opposition organizations.

In December 2000, the ELF-RC, which was scheduled to hold its 5^th National Congress in Khartoum, Sudan, was told at the last minute (with some delegates returned at the airport) that the venue would not be provided due to the then-improving relationship between the governments of Sudan and Eritrea. The ELF-RC held its congress in Gondar, Ethiopia. The “improving relationship” was short-lived: the governments of Eritrea and Sudan resumed their accusations and counter-accusation of each other.

In the early 1990s, when Turabi, then Bashir’s mentor, was the de-facto ruler of Sudan, he closed the offices of the Eritrean opposition organizations and allegedly surrendered some members of the Islamist parties to the government of Eritrea.

In 1982, when a joint EPLF (now PFDJ, the ruling party in Eritrea) and the TPLF (now the ruling party in Ethiopia) attacked the ELF resulting in its move to Sudan, the Numeiri administration arrested ELF cadres, disarmed the combatants and confiscated the organization’s properties.

In the 1970s, when Haile Selasse helped broker a short-lived peace agreement between the government of Sudan and South Sudan rebels, the Numeiri administration closed the offices of the Eritrean liberation fronts. The offices were re-opened after the peace deal fell apart.

In the 1960s, the Aboud government arrested Eritrean combatants and delivered them to the Ethiopian government in Tessenei, which immediately sentenced them to life-in-prison (Alem Begagn) terms.