Activists are calling Sudan's recent elections "rigged" and demanding that the results not be mislabeled legitimate. As the head of the Save Darfur Coalition put it:
President Obama must lead world leaders to not recognize Bashir as a legitimately elected leader and to press for meaningful steps towards political freedom in Sudan in the run up to next year's referendum to determine independence for South Sudan.
Among many other problems (such as President al-Bashir's threat to cut off the fingers of election observers), the government's pre-election census did not register most of the 2.6 million Darfuris who have been forced from their home villages into camps. (Darfuris belonging to groups allied with the government were mostly registered, despite the difficulties of reaching these often-nomadic groups.)
This raises the question: how hard can it be to take a census of a camp for internally displaced persons? The people there can't go anywhere, until the day when international pressure forces Khartoum to negotiate a genuine peace with security. The regime's flagrant failure to register these citizens to vote adds insult to injury -- or, more precisely, adds another injury to the already heaping pile.
Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.
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