If you use this document, you are encouraged to make a donation to Amnesty International to support future research. Two months after elections which completed the Sudan Government's transformation of itself from a military to civilian administration, the continuing pattern of serious human rights violations underlines that domestic and international efforts to secure improvements must be a long-term program. This report describes the major human developments in Sudan since the launch in January 1995 of a worldwide campaign by Amnesty International on human rights abuse in Sudan. The situation remains one of grave concern. The Sudan Government has continued to attempt to silence its internal critics.
Detainees continue to be tortured and ill-treated.
Cruel and inhuman penalties remain enshrined in law. Indeed, secret measures by the government to further limit human rights safeguards have been discovered. Inside the war zones unarmed civilians have been the targets of deliberate attacks both by government troops and opposition forces. Since January 1995 hundreds of villagers, many of them women and children, have been deliberately and arbitrarily killed or kidnapped. The government reacted angrily to Amnesty International's 1995 campaign, accusing the organization of being motivated by a hatred of Islam and of being part of a western conspiracy against the Sudan.