Excerpts from JEM’s Website
February 8th, 2009
...Twenty seven years ago, in 1982 at a hotel in Khartoum, two hours after his release from Kobar prison in Khartoum, Joseph Oduho was interviewed by a number of Sudanese journalists. The question that interest most of the journalists was “are you a secessionist and if so why do you support the secession of the Southern Sudan? Mr. Oduho moved to the edge of his chair, slowly emptied his pipe, opened a a small box of tobacco to fill his pipe, and as he searched his pocket for a lighter, all the journalists and people around replicated the same movement, reaching out into their pockets and bags to find a lighter or box of matches. Half the people simultaneously offered him lighters and matchboxes.
The late Oduho remarked saying, this gesture is testimony to the Sudanese people, the most generous people that I will turn to in the hour of need. The fact is “we Southerners and northerners too have been led by successive governments that have turned the North-South relationship into a kind of conservative traditional marriage, where one party considers itself the head and provider. The experience since 1972 has been disappointing. The limited rights that Southern Sudanese got from the Addis Ababa agreement has been systematically eroded and blatantly ignored and regional rule undermined by the imposition of Sharia law. The best advocate for secession is a partner or government that does not live up to its promise...
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