The Organisation of African Trade Union Unity (OATUU), which represents 25 million organized African Workers of all trade union tendencies, said on Thursday that it was shocked at arrest warrant sought by Mr Luis Moreno Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, for Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir for his alleged crimes in Darfur.

“The arrest warrant is unhelpful to the ongoing process of negotiations and peace in Darfur and it will contribute to the intransigence of the divided foreign assisted Darfur rebels,” it said.

A statement issued by the Accra-based OUTUU said it had been following with keen interest the events in Darfur since 2003 when the Darfur rebels triggered the crisis with attacks on government installations.

“The Abuja Peace Agreement signed by the Sudanese government and the Darfur rebels, which was brokered by the African Union, was never respected by the rebels, who instead split into splinter groups, armed and financed by foreign powers.

“Any self-respecting government, including the government of the Sudan, cannot fold its arms while rebels armed and financed by foreign powers, want to cheaply exploit the mineral resources of Darfur, at the expense of the suffering Darfur people.”

It said foreign news media and NGOs “in the false propaganda” had described the Darfur crisis as a racial war between the Arabs and black Darfurian ethnic group, forgetting that the overwhelming majority of the Sudanese peoples are black.

OATUU said, in its attempt to know the truth about the Darfur crisis, sent a fact-finding delegation of nine top African trade union leaders from all the five regions of Africa to Darfur.

The delegation, it said, visited North and South Darfur in the Sudan and also met a cross-section of Darfur people, including workers, traditional leaders and internally-displaced people in refugee camps as well as government, civil servants, and NGO representatives.

“The delegation reported that it found no trace of genocide in Darfur. The Darfur crisis was mainly due to the never-ending frictions between the nomad cattle breeders and sedentary farmers; the land-tenure problems and disputes and misunderstanding among various tribes and ethnic groups, as can be found in several regions of Africa.”

OATUU said it was against this background that it did not accept the rationale and justification for Mr. Ocampo's arrest warrant against President Bashir.

“At a time when the comprehensive peace agreement between the Sudanese government and the Sudan People Liberation Movement of Southern Sudan is being fully implemented, the OATUU and the entire workers of Africa contemptuously reject the Ocampo call for the arrest warrant against President Bashir.”

OATUU called on the Africa Union and the United Nations to stop “this flagrant abuse of the international judicial process aimed at derailing the peace process in the Sudan”.


Source: GNA