Two weeks ago we published a press release from Act for Sudan: Rights Groups, Genocide Scholars ask Germany to cancel Sudan Investment Conference.
Yesterday, Janessa Schilmoeller posted on MPN: International Rewards May Embolden Genocidal Regime, Sudanese Rights Groups Say. She writes:
At least two Sudanese nationals were arrested last Tuesday by German authorities while protesting among dozens of activists outside a Sudan economic forum at the German Federal Foreign Office in Berlin.
Four additional activists were injured when German police used violence against the crowd. Civil society groups claim police violence was unjustified since the group had obtained a permit for the peaceful demonstration.
According to a female Sudanese activist’s account of the event: “One police officer beat one of the protester[s] on his face and broke his nose because the protester tried to pull back his friend from the police. Then, a lot of police officers came very close and began pulling and arresting other people.”
In testimony to the Sudanese nonviolent resistance movement, Girifna, the activist explained how German police did not allow enough time for protesters to translate police messages into French, English and Sudanese before intervening with violence.
“Then the police took the demonstration’s registration and destroyed it, and said to us that our demonstration wouldn’t be legal anymore,” she added.
The business conference, originally scheduled for October, was postponed until Jan. 29 after protesters stormed the German embassy in Khartoum last September in response to an American-produced YouTube film that mocked Islam.
Roughly 250 participants attended the economic conference, otherwise known as the German-Sudan-South Sudan business day, including 100 Sudanese officials, 17 South Sudanese officials and 49 German companies.
Read more here.
