Alaa Salah, 22, talks to the Guardian about having her image seen around the world
The young woman in a photo that has come to symbolise the protest movement in Sudan has been identified as Alaa Salah, a 22-year-old architecture student in Khartoum.
Salah told the Guardian she was happy that the image, taken on Monday evening at a demonstration in the Sudanese capital, had been viewed so widely.
Continue reading...As a wave of protests continues against President Omar al-Bashir's 30-year rule, viral images reveal women spearheading the demonstrations, despite the dangers of speaking out against this oppressive regime. Price rises and food shortages first sparked unrest in December 2018, but the biggest demonstrations so far have taken place in recent days, shaking authorities in Khartoum
Continue reading... Witnesses in Khartoum describe attacks by militia using teargas and firing live ammunition
Thousands of protesters camped in the centre of Khartoum appear to have defied a fresh attempt to clear them by armed militia loyal to the Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir.
Civil society groups run by medics reported two dead and many wounded, some critically, in renewed violence in the capital on Tuesday morning. Other groups put the toll as high as five dead, including at least one soldier, and more than a hundred hurt.
Continue reading...Sudanese security forces have used teargas in an attempt to disperse protesters in central Khartoum. The demonstrators have been camped for more than two days as they call for the president, Omar al-Bashir, to resign. Protests began in December 2018 after the government raised bread prices, but they have since evolved into nationwide unrest against Bashir's rule.
Continue reading...We wholeheartedly agree with your editorial (7 March) stating that the demonstrators in Sudan calling daily for freedom and the rule of law “do not want a different version of this regime, or more conflict”. The problem is indeed the regime, not just a president indicted for genocide by the international criminal court and for whom, despite their public claims to support the ICC, many external actors seek a “soft landing” in the name of stability. Sudan is not stable for the Sudanese people.
Nevertheless, Britain has engaged in a flawed strategic dialogue with the regime. It has spearheaded the Khartoum process, a supposed partnership with the brutal and corrupt Sudanese regime to “manage” (in other words, to stem) migration to Europe. That process relies on the notorious rapid support forces, mainly former Janjaweed, which the ICC has implicated in war crimes in Darfur. Most Sudanese migrants are in any case refugees fleeing their repressive regime, including the very forces now tasked with capturing them.
Continue reading...Many of the Sudanese protesters demanding an end to Omar al-Bashir’s regime have known no other rule. They were not yet born when he seized power in a coup three decades ago – their country’s median age is just below 20. But they are certain they want something better.
The ruthless Sudanese president is now facing a sustained and unprecedented challenge. The killings of more than 50 peaceful protesters, the beating and arrests of hundreds more and the declaration of a state of emergency last month have, if anything, spurred on demonstrators. The protests were triggered in December by a subsidy cut which sent bread prices soaring, but fuelled by anger going far beyond the country’s dire economic straits to corruption, government sclerosis and brutality.
Continue reading...Report says aid to displaced people in Africa undermined by Home Office approach to asylum seekers and refugees
The UK government’s migration policy is “disconnected and incoherent” and involves the pitting of one government department against another, a report by MPs has said.
The international development committee (IDC) urged the government to double the number of vulnerable refugees offered resettlement in Britain, up to 10,000 a year.
Continue reading...Xavier Bettel says his same-sex marriage would condemn him to death in some countries
Luxembourg’s prime minister, Xavier Bettel, has confronted Arab leaders over the repression of gay rights, telling them his same-sex marriage would condemn him to death in some of their countries.
The conference room at a summit of EU and Arab states fell silent when Bettel made his statement, according to a German TV journalist.
Continue reading...Clashes between police and protesters break out as Omar al-Bashir announces measures
Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, has appointed a new prime minister, but left the country’s current defence, foreign and justice ministers in place following a declaration of a one-year state of emergency.
Just hours after announcing that he would dissolve the country’s central and state governments, Bashir appointed new state governors who were all from the military, according to a presidency statement.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...