Sudanese scholars, dignitaries, civil society leaders sent open Letter to president Trump

Khartoum, 1-12-2019 (SUNA) – Senior Sudanese scholars, university professors, academics, trade unionists, human rights activists and leaders from the Forces for Freedom and Change, have written an open letter to the American President Donald Trump, the US secretary of the State and member of the US congress calling for removing the name of Sudan from the list of countries the US considers sponsors of international terrorism. The dignitaries and society leaders pleaded that a wrongdoing carried by the deposed dictatorship should not result in the punishment of the people who dethrone that dictator. The signatories who grouped intellectual, academic, civic, political and private sector actors and members of civil society organizations said they “urge the swift removal of Sudan from designation as a ‘state sponsor of terror’ (SSoT).” ” Sudan is at a crossroads: after extraordinary action by its people to topple the despotic and ideologically motivated regime of Omar Al Bashir there is finally an opportunity for the country to emerge from thirty years of conflict, oppression, economic mismanagement and isolation into a democratic era of peace and prosperity.” The argued. The added that the new cabinet, led by renowned former international civil servant Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdouk, now faces a series of serious challenges, from turning around the economy, to negotiating peace, introducing democratic and human rights reforms, and dismantling the deeprooted structures of corruption and exclusion. They further said a range of destabilizing forces, including those allied with international terror with whom the old regime had a symbiotic ideological and financial relationship, are eager to undermine the new dispensation: they may represent an immediate existential risk to the Sudanese civilian transitional process. The open letter added that the overwhelming majority of Sudanese, however, have a conviction that the current course of peaceful change is irreversible. “The SSoT designation puts an unjust economic and political burden on the shoulder on a government that is working in extraordinary conditions to establish democracy, peace, justice and stability in an exhausted country. We believe it is also against the US's own interests.” It concluded that as former President Jimmy Carter has urged, “President Donald Trump's administration should work with Congress to remove Sudan from the SSoT list immediately and give democracy there a chance”. The full text of the letter is published by Sudanow at http://sudanow-magazine.net. MA/MA