Khartoum police stop awareness campaign on sexual child abuse

The Sudanese Child Protection Society said police authorities banned an awareness campaign in public squares in order to educate citizens about the need to protect children from abuse and crimes of sexual harassment.

Osman El Agib, Chairman of the Child Protection Society, told Radio Tamazuj that the police had stopped a rally organised by this organisation at Ali Abdelatif Street last Thursday, as part of a campaign aimed at educating citizens on the protection of children.

“It is unfortunate when the authorities intervene and stop the rally at this critical time while the crime is on the rise,” El Agib said.

“Who is the beneficiary of the continuation of the sexual assault and harassment crimes against children,” he asked.

A Sudanese juvenile court last week issued a death sentence against a man found guilty of sexually abusing a three-year-old child in an area south of Khartoum.

The organisation had requested that all sexual abusers be executed in public.

Child abuse story

Sudanese security forces seized the Monday print runs of 10 newspapers and suspended the publishing licences of four of them in a major media crackdown in May. One of the newspapers, El Khartoum, was reportedly suspended over a story about a consumer rights forum where one speaker discussed “the sexual abuse of school- and nursery- children on the buses that transport them”.

The chief editor heard the decision to seize the papers had come from the head of the Sudanese security service.

(Radio Tamazuj)