The race is on to get 100,000 signatures, by Monday February 15, on a petition on the White House website to force President Barack Obama to act on ending US sanctions against Sudan, which the petitioners says are “oppressing the poor and killing innocent people”.
At the time of writing, over 75,000 signatures have been recorded on the petition, which was first posted on January 16.
It reads: “The poor and helpless in Sudan are bearing the brunt of the economic sanctions imposed on the country by the United States 23 years ago.
“The intended goal of the sanctions might have been to weaken the oppressive government of Sudan, but they are producing exactly the opposite result
“They are weakening and impoverishing the people of Sudan and strengthening the grip of the regime on the country.
“We plead with president Obama to do the right and humane thing by ordering an immediate end to the Sudan sanctions.”
The petitioners were embolden by an opinion piece published on January 14 on the website of the US magazine, Foreign Policy, which highlighted the dire plight of ordinary Sudanese people in the face of crippling US sanctions against their country.
The petitioners’ argument is that the unintended consequence of US sanctions on the living standards of ordinary Sudanese has been exceptionally severe.
They note that in key sectors such as finance, transportation, agriculture, health, and information technology there has been serious “damage to the lives and opportunities of ordinary people in Sudan to free themselves from poverty, wreaked by the US sanctions regime – including the State Sponsor of Terrorism (SST) listing”.
Their argument goes: “Even though it sees them as unjustified, arbitrary, and unfair, the government of Sudan has a moral obligation to never give up actively trying to get US economic sanctions removed.
“Sanctions invariably tend to have a direct proportional relationship with the bottom of the pyramid.
“They hurt the poor hardest. Sudan has been no exception to this rule.”
Source: GNA
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