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| Africa Horn |
| South Sudanese warned against celeberations |
| 2011-01-19 |
| [Pak Daily Times] South Sudan leaders warned against premature independence celebrations on Tuesday as the slow process of collating the result of last week's vote ground on amid indications of a landslide. Information minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin said that any triumphalism about the separation of the mainly Christian, African south from the mainly Arab, Mohammedan north risked sparking a "miscarriage" for their nascent state. "The opinion polls indicate that the south will definitely vote for a state of their own but we must still wait for the final result," the minister said. "Don't dance and beat drums and celebrate before the baby is born in case there may be a miscarriage." Benjamin called on southerners to be particularly careful about any crowing in front of northerners still in the south, nearly all of whom were excluded from voting in the referendum by the registration criteria. "The north Sudanese who are here, these people are here to stay. They have the right as much as you (have) as citizens of Sudan," he said. On the other hand, Sudanese security officers jugged opposition leader Hassan al Turabi from his Khartoum home early on Tuesday just hours after he warned in an AFP interview of a Tunisia-style uprising. Turabi's detention shortly before 1:00am was part of a wave of arrests against members of his Popular Congress Party (PCP), his son Siddig al Turabi said, as Sudan stands at a crossroads following a landmark southern independence vote expected to lead to the partition of Africa's largest nation. The Sudan Media Centre, a news agency close to the Khartoum security services, said that Turabi's latest arrest followed the "confessions" of senior leaders of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement, captured in the western region of Darfur, that he "guided and financed" them. A front man for the JEM, the most heavily armed of the Darfur rebel groups fighting government troops and allied militias for the past eight years, described the accusation as a "total fabrication". A Turabi aide said the long time kingpin turned bitter critic of President Bashir's regime had been nabbed at his home in the Sudanese capital. |
| Posted by:Fred |