Activists, Journalists Increasingly Threatened in Sudan

A tense two days fortunately ended with the release of three Sudanese activists detained and beaten by the notorious security forces in Khartoum this week. The activists were stopped on Tuesday while distributing the first edition of a magazine published by the human rights group Girifna, which rose to prominence in the lead-up to the April elections in Sudan.

In a post on Girifna’s website, the group reported that the security officers said it was a situation that “does not involve the police.” When Girifna’s lawyers tried to get involved, they were told that instructions for handling the activists were “coming from a higher authority.”

The three activists — Hassan Ishag, Azzi Eldine Al-anssari and Mohammed Khiri — were released on Wednesday without charge and in good health after being beaten, threatened, and terrorized, the group said. Girifna also reported that their houses had been searched. A source familiar with the situation suggested that the security services sought to convince the activists to become informants.

Not exactly a rousing affirmation of the “progress made so far to expand democratic space in Sudan” that the U.S., U.K., and Norway declared following the Sudanese election. (To be fair, they recognized the observers’ assessment that the elections “failed to meet international standards,” but they mostly chalked up this failing to technical and logistical issues.)

No, clearly any space for journalists and civil society that opened up prior to the election has snapped closed since the international spotlight turned off and President Bashir was declared the victor.

A report by Human Rights Watch last week documented the state-sponsored abuses that occurred prior to, during, and after the April elections. In sum, Human Rights Watch found that "the elections were supposed to help expand democracy in Sudan, but they have had the opposite effect." Events that have transpired in the past week further underscore this damning conclusion.

Apart from the incident with the Girifna activists, the Sudanese government reinstated pre-print censorship of newspapers. Last September, in preparation for the election, the Sudanese government removed the censorship requirement, though there were numerous reports of articles being withheld and journalists intimidated. On Wednesday, the state-aligned Sudanese Media Centre reported the “regret” of the intelligence services at having to renew censorship over some political newspapers’ “treatment of national issues.” In particular, intelligence said it’s necessary to reduce the influence of papers that seek to “strengthen separatist tendencies in the north and south,” citing such leanings as a contradiction of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement which “extols unity.”

Three newspapers were banned entirely, of which, one indefinitely.

Interestingly, the censored paper that drew the most attention, al-Intibaha, was one that openly advocated for separation — but not on grounds sympathetic to the South as one might expect. As Sudanese commentator Magdi Elgizouli explained in a blog post commenting on the ban, the paper’s main line of reasoning is that North and South Sudan are “irreconcilable others, racially, religiously and culturally; and that the South has persistently been a burden on the Arab Moslem North economically, and an exhaustion militarily.” It’s hard to say what Sudan’s ruling party sought to gain by banning a paper that seems to share its condescension toward the South, if not the same end goal. The southern ruling party has complained about the paper’s coverage in the past as well.

Today marks exactly six months until the South will vote on whether to secede from the North, and a daunting list of arrangements need to be made to prepare for the anticipated creation of Africa’s newest state — and, crucially, manage relations with its would-be neighbor to the north. The major points of potential conflict and mass atrocities — such as the contentious border, the allocation of oil wealth, post-separation citizenship issues — certainly warrant high-level attention and technical assistance. But the international and regional actors on the ground would do well to also keep a close eye on — and speak out about — the day-to-day abuses that give alarming indications of the type of states that are emerging.

Photo credit: "Sudan Genocide," used with written permission.