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Woman have been at the
forefront of the fight for justice and media freedom in Sudan in recent weeks
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Social
media activist Samar Margani is now facing her second week of uncertainty; novelist
and columnist Rania Mamoun is also unsure of her future. The two women are both
facing prosecution by the Sudanese police because of their association with
recent anti-government demonstrations. They are just two of the growing number
of women making their political voice heard in Sudan and suffering as a result.
There
has been rioting in Khartoum and other cities in Sudan since mid-September
following the lifting of fuel subsides and doubling of the price of petrol and
cooking gas. The clashes have often been violent with activists claiming that
over 210 protestors have been killed. Samar Margani was arrested as she was
filming the shooting of a demonstrator which she planned to post online.
"They
threw me into a police vehicle with other protesters, beat me and threatened to
rape me when I resisted," Samar told Doha Centre for Media Freedom (DCMF).
"Some of the men were in police uniforms while others were in civilian
clothes but I believe they were all members of the National Intelligence
Security Services (NISS).
A
regular Facebook blogger, Samar openly described her treatment by the security
forces on Saudi
TV but what she is charged with remains less clear.
"Samar was particular badly treated because she is a young girl,"
says Rasha Awad of the campaign group 'The Initiative for Non-Violence against
Women.' "By targeting women and subjecting them to sexual harassment they
hope the shame will make their families put pressure on them to no longer
participate in protest activities.”
Security
forces and the threat against women
Abdelhahman
Al -Mahdi, whose wife, Dalia Elroubi was taken from their home after she had
taken part in demonstrations knows all about the security forces’ coercion.
"The
NISS is very angry about women activists and believe that women should stay at
home and take care of their children and husbands,” he said.
"They
abused me when I went to police station to visit my wife. They asked why I let
my wife be an activist and said it will have an effect on my manhood."
Rania
Mamoun's fame as a novelist and a columnist on 'Al Doha Magazine' didn't give her any
preferential treatment. "They grabbed me from the streets, beat me,
molested me and threatened me with gang rape," she noted. She has
been charged with ‘crimes against the state’, which carries a punishment from
10 years in prison to the death penalty. Meanwhile her articles, like many
foreign publications critical of the Sudanese government, have been stopped at
the border.
Journalist
Amal Habbani is another female member of the press now having to look over her
shoulder, fearful that she could be again detained at any time. She was grabbed
by police after attending the funeral of Salah Sanhory, the most prominent
victim of police shootings, and thrown into a police van and badly beaten. She
was kept in solitary confinement for four days before being released without
charge. During interrogations, she was condemned for ‘following a Western
agenda’ in her newspaper column.
Female
journalists have been prominent in protests because of what they see as the
gradual take-over of the media by the state. "We have participated both on
the ground with the protesters and individually on social media,” explained
journalist Rishan Oshi, a columnist at 'Al
Hura', “because the NISS has prevented us from writing freely in
our own newspapers by giving orders to the editors-in-chief to stop publishing
news items about the demonstrations."
Inequality
in the eye of the law
“Once
they have been arrested many women have been sexually abused, but they can't
bring cases against the police or security forces because of their weakness in
Sudanese law,” according to human rights lawyer Mohamed Moneinm. "There is
a real problem in the law in terms of women’s rights because the laws here in
Sudan are based on Sharia Law which doesn't recognise women's rights."
"The
police forces act with impunity, irrespective of any arrest warrants and
ordinary people are powerless to stop them. Women have been sexually abused
whether they were arrested at demonstrations or not,” he continued. “When women
go to court to get justice they are required to produce four witnesses of the
sexual harassment. Clearly, that’s impossible and so it often comes down to the
word of the victim against the offender."
“Getting
women’s rights is not going to be easy...”
Dr
Mahasin Elabbas, professor of Gender Studies at Ahfad Women’s University in
Khartoum, thinks that when women are arrested they have no guarantee of humane
treatment: "Noone knows anything about the detention for women. They
face sexual abuses and sometimes are raped. Getting women's rights is not going
to be easy; women have to pay for their rights in order to have equal
society."
Two
years ago, the activist and artist Safia Ishaq allegedly that she has been
raped by the security forces in their office in Bahri, in east Khartoum while
last year a video was put on YouTube showing a young woman being sexually
harassed in a Khartoum police station.
In
court, Samar Margani accused the police of sexual harassment but so far her
accusations have been ignored, while the security forces increase their
surveillance of her, often trailing her in the street. Rasha Awad believes that
Sudanese law has double standards, arguing: “Rather than persecuting woman and
non-violent protestors they should prosecute those that have killed peaceful
protestors and tortured detainees."
Source: DCMF
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