Postpone The Hamadab Dam Project

To:  Dr. Henning Northdurft

President,
Lahmeyer Int Gmbh
Friedberger St 173
61118 Bad Vilbel
Germany

We the undersigned are utterly disturbed by your Firm involvement with the government of the Sudan, providing technical consultancy for the Hamadab (sometimes known as Merowi) Dam project.

We write to protest your firm involvement in a project that displaces more than fifty thousands people, inundate a dear part of our country rich in history and antiquities.

Over the last fourteen years Sudanese civil societies have been campaigning tirelessly to get the implementation of this project postponed until peace is achieved, human rights and democracy are restored.
Obviously; this project will affect the life of every single Sudanese, therefore we believe the project needs to be subjected to tough scrutiny before being implemented; and it’s far reaching and lasting effects needs to be critically examined. Such critical scientific evaluation and assessment for all aspects can’t be undertaken under an authoritative Islamic fundamentalist government, that considers itself to be the shadow of the God on earth.

Need not to say, implementation of such huge and controversial project in the only -war free- part of the country, can only lead to more chaos and social unrest. Due to its pernicious nature of the project which involves a movement of a sizeable number of people, in addition to the contemporary weak state of affairs in the Sudanese State; going ahead with the project under these circumstances can only lead to confrontation and violence. We strongly believe that; the government with its current collapsing and poor administrative structures is by no mean capable of implementing this huge project. However; insisting to go ahead with this project under all these circumstances will lead to socio-economical, political, and environmental catastrophe.

Neither the socio-political nor the economic factors imply the quickening of the implementation of this project. On the contrary all socio-economic, political, environmental..etc aspects of this project indicate that the implementation of the project can’t better be mistimed.

On the other hand, we would like to bring to your attention that, the major aspects of this project, including social, environmental, ecological and cultural have not been studied. The government- as would be expected from such unrepresentative regime- is clearly not concerned with these aspects either due to corruption and/or ignorance.

Further to the above; the project has lacked the involvement of Sudanese people. Neither the affected people have been consulted nor were Sudanese national experts involved in the project at any stage. The participation from the Sudanese side was limited to government officials; even at this level participation was limited to the agents of the implementing companies .There is an urgent need to incorporate the input of Sudanese national experts, and the concerns and interests of the affected people are unfailingly addressed.

One other major catastrophic effect of this project is the resettlement component. The government as you are aware; have already taken practical steps to move helpless small farmers communities from the river banks to resettle them in the desert, evidently; another crime to be added to the appalling human rights records of the government against the Sudanese people.

We acknowledge that you are aware of the human rights records of government, and we are also aware of your prior knowledge of the government lack of legitimacy, therefore we request your firm to suspend its technical consultancy contract with the government for this project immediately, until democracy, freedom of expression are restored.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The Postpone The Hamadab Dam Project Petition to Dr. Henning Northdurft was created by and written by Ali Askouri.  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.

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