Gross human rights violations continue in Sudan five years after a military coup overthrew the elected civilian government in June 30, 1989, and brought to power a military regime dominated by the National Islamic Front (NIF), a minority party that achieved only 18.4 percent of the popular vote in the 1986 elections.1 The Sudanese have suffered under military rule and single-party dictatorship for twenty-seven out of the thirty-eight years since independence in 1956; they succeeded in overthrowing oppressive regimes twice in the past, in October 1964 and April 1985. Southern Sudanese continue to struggle against the present regime, as they have done against previous northern-dominated regimes for all but eleven of the thirty-eight years of independence. Massive violations of human rights and humanitarian law in the context of this civil war in southern Sudan are detailed in our July 1994 report, Civilian Devastation: Abuses by All Parties to the War in Southern Sudan. This report highlights human rights abuses in northern Sudan, focusing on individual testimonies to supplement the evidence of violations in the south detailed earlier.
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