Mr Bashir, let the Southerners go

By Kipkirui K’Telwa

The Southern Sudanese should be left to determine their own destiny by having their own independent country.

The over 3.9 million Southerners who registered to vote are ready and determined to end the over 50 years of wars and secede from the North and become the new citizens of the world.

In time, the Southern Sudan will have a seat and a vote at the UN General Assembly as a member state.

The Southerners and other non-Muslim regions have known no wealth, peace or freedom. Because of cultural and religious clash, the Southerners have no meaningful education programme, which explains the poor state of development in the region.

Between 1983 and 2005, the North-South war claimed more than two million lives and displaced at least four million others, mostly Southern Sudanese.

But on January 2005, the war ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between the government of Sudan led by Omar el Bashir and rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement led by the late Dr John Garang who died six months later in a helicopter crash. Part of the 2005 CPA deal is the referendum vote that will see the Southern Sudanese decide on whether to declare independence from the northern government dominated by Arab Muslims.

The Muslim Arabs, who constitute 48 per cent of the population, have lorded over other indigenous and non-Muslim southern Sudanese who include the Dinka, Nuer, Azande, Bari, Shiluk and Anwak.

The application of Sharia law dimmed any hopes of non-Muslim Sudanese.

When hardliner Islamists led by President Omar el Bashir took control of Sudan in 1989, they made it clear that secularism was not acceptable.

Sudanese human rights activist Albaqir Alafif Mukhtar says women and the arts were the two greatest casualties of the Islamic state.

Though there are numerous oil fields in the South, the only oil refineries are located in the Muslim controlled North including Khartoum.

The majority of the blacks who live in the North are consigned to poor suburbs known as the Black Belt. Therefore for most of them, the journey to the referendum has been long and torturous.

Although the International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo has succeeded in indicting Bashir of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur region, he has not succeeded in arresting him.

With such a "wanted" status Bashir should let the tormented Southerners walk to their freedom and dignity.