Six years after his death, youth idol Mahmoud Abdelaziz remains an influential symbol of a very different Sudan
When Mahmoud Abdelaziz, one of Sudan’s most popular singers, died in Amman in January 2013, his fans mobbed the runway of Khartoum airport as his body was flown home, forcing the cancellation of flights.
Others poured out on to the city’s streets, forming one of the biggest crowds witnessed in Sudan’s recent history.
Continue reading...Sudan missed out on the Arab spring, but that may be changing. Protests against Omar al-Bashir, the indicted war criminal who has dominated the country for 29 years, are becoming a daily occurrence. Street-level unrest, sparked by rising bread and fuel prices, began last month and spread quickly. But the focus of demonstrators, their ranks swollen by teachers, lawyers and doctors, has switched to Bashir himself. They want him gone.
Bashir’s response has been predictably repressive. And the president may succeed in battering his critics into silence, as in the past. But the causes of the unrest cannot be bludgeoned away: a struggling economy, low investment, high unemployment, corruption, bad governance and a potentially disastrous lack of opportunity for new generations of young people.
Continue reading...Five journalists held at undisclosed locations and dozens more arrested and released, with media blackout expected to worsen
The government of Omar al-Bashir in Sudan has launched an “alarming” crackdown on journalists covering weeks of protests against the regime.
At least five reporters have been detained by the national intelligence security services and are being held at undisclosed locations. Dozens of others have been arrested and held before being released.
Continue reading...The people are rising up. But the western celebrities and the human rights industry that fought for this are absent
In 2017, a US law firm signed a contract with the Sudanese government, to assist in efforts to lift the economic sanctions that had been suffocating the country since 1997. Within weeks, George Clooney and John Prendergast, veteran activists for human rights in Sudan, wrote a letter in Time magazine, objecting to this. They asked rhetorically, did the law firm’s senior ranks, filled with ex-senators and congressmen, not know that president Omar al-Bashir’s regime had committed mass atrocities? That it was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Darfur? That it persecuted Christians? “The question of their firm working in the service of such a brutal and vile regime can only be answered by the simplest of terms,” they concluded. “Probably, they just don’t know.”
The sanctions were lifted, but it made little difference. The world had forgotten Sudan and was in no rush to be reminded. All that was associated with the country, ticked off neatly in the Clooney/Prendergast letter, was unsavoury. So allow me to remind you. For the past four weeks, Sudan has been seized by a popular uprising on the part of a people that has been suffering under a brutal dictatorship for 30 years, and from the effects of the global human rights machine that cut them off from the world for 20.
Continue reading...Activists say a child and doctor killed in demonstrations against Omar al-Bashir
Thousands of people have taken to the streets in cities across Sudan, including the capital, where activists said a child and a doctor were killed in clashes between police and protesters calling for the end of Omar al-Bashir’s 30-year-old rule.
Thursday’s protests marked some of the most widespread disturbances since unrest began on 19 December.
Continue reading...With the country in crisis and public discontent mounting, is the endgame nearing for Omar al-Bashir?
Surrounded by brown hills close to the Ethiopian border, the town of El-Gadarif is an unremarkable place. A centre for the trade in sorghum and sesame, it is dominated by its huge Russian-built grain silos.
Four weeks ago, however, the eastern Sudanese town was thrust into the spotlight when it became a centre for protests against the regime of President Omar al-Bashir.
Continue reading...More than one in 10 people travelling through the region are taken, as smugglers boost dwindling returns by preying on people for ransom, survey finds
More than 15% of refugees travelling north through the Horn of Africa were kidnapped during their journey last year, according to what is believed to be one of the most comprehensive surveys of migration journeys.
Researchers from the Mixed Migration Centre (MMC), who conducted 11,150 interviews across 20 countries and seven migration routes, warned that kidnappings may be increasing and identified people travelling through the Horn of Africa to north Africa and Europe as the most vulnerable.
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