Sudan referendum result confirmed
Nearly 99% from the south voted for independence, although human rights groups warn against rewarding Bashir
Map: Southern Sudan Photograph: Graphic
The world’s newest country has been born with confirmation that southern Sudan voted almost unanimously for independence from the north.
Results announced in Khartoum showed a near 99% majority in favour of cleaving Africa’s biggest country – a mantle that will pass to Algeria.
The landslide was greeted with dancing and flag-waving in the southern capital, Juba, where people braved blistering heat to celebrate the end of decades of marginalisation. “The results of the referendum mean I am free today,” Abiong Nyok, a housewife, told the BBC. “Now I am a first class citizen in my own country.”
While the relatively peaceful conduct of the vote was welcomed, human rights groups expressed alarm at suggestions that Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, should be “rewarded”. Weekend reports suggested he could receive a year’s reprieve from war crimes charges relating to Darfur after France and the US agreed to consider deferring the international criminal court’s indictment. The US has also signalled it is ready to remove Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism and to help ease crippling trade sanctions.
But the campaign group Waging Peace said that in the past week Bashir’s security forces had crushed political protests in the north, resulting in hundreds of arrests and an unconfirmed number of deaths.
Olivia Warham, director of Waging Peace, said: “The final results of southern Sudan’s referendum on secession come as student protesters are beaten and killed on the streets of Khartoum, serving as a reminder that the world cannot see the referendum as a ‘job well done’ and turn away from Sudan.
“The Sudanese youth are demanding the freedoms that their ‘brothers’ in Egypt and Tunisia have claimed, and we should be hearing similar warnings from David Cameron that the Sudanese people too must be allowed to demonstrate without brutality.”
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