Reports on detention of activists in Sudan increase

Various sources in Sudan reported the detention of a number of anti-election campaigners during the past few days. 

According to the Darfur Bar Association, human rights lawyer Musa Zakariya Juju and his client were detained in Khartoum on Sunday. Lawyer Ali Saeed Kuku was held at his office in El Sawra district in Omdurman. University teaching assistant Khaled Khalil Musa, and teacher Khamees Hamdan were taken from their homes in El Sawra.

On Monday, the first day of the election, Siddig Mohamed Joda, El Jeili Abdallah, Siddig Ahmed Siddig, Elsir Hammad, and another activist were held in El Roseires in Blue Nile state, the Committee of Solidarity with Victims of the September Demonstrations stated.

The Sudan Appeal opposition forces said in a statement on Wednesday that security agents had detained seven activists in Khartoum, Ed Duweim, El Suki, and El Gedaref on Sunday. 

Radio Dabanga reported on Monday that Shumo Hamid Zakaria, Adnan Jamaleldin, and Taha Mohamed Taha were detained in El Suki, near Sinja in eastern Sudan, on the day before the start of the election. Mohamed Yousef, Ahmed El Tayeb, and Ali Omar El Faki, leading members of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), were held in Ed Duweim, White Nile state.

Selma Adam Bineya, prominent member of the mainstream Sudan Liberation Movement, was taken by security officers from her house in Omdurman to an unknown destination. Activist Sandra Faroug Kadouda was detained by men in civilian clothes, when she was driving her car to an anti-election sit-in at the headquarters of the National Umma Party in Omdurman on Sunday.

Kadouda was released in Khartoum two days later. She had been beaten, and her shoulder was dislocated. She immediately visited a police station, to acquire “Form 8”, legally required to obtain medical evidence of an assault.

‘Monitored’

The Sudan Appeal signatories also reported that the headquarters of the Sudanese Communist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party in Khartoum, and the National Umma Party in Omdurman, are surrounded by security forces.

The houses of Ibrahim El Sheikh, head of the Sudanese Congress Party, Maryam El Mahdi, Co-Vice President of the Umma Party, and Mohamed Diaeldin, leader of the Sudanese Baath Party, “are monitored too”.

Four more students detained in El Fasher

On Tuesday, students of the University of El Fasher gathered at the campus in the North Darfuri capital, and staged a demonstration against the election and the incumbent regime. Security and police forces used tear gas and live bullets to disperse them. Two students were injured, and 12 others were detained.

The students continued their protest the following day, one of the students told Radio Dabanga. “The security forces reinforced their presence in and around the premises of El Fasher University on Wednesday, and prevented us from reaching the campus. Yet, many students managed to enter the university anyhow.”

He said that the demonstrating students were attacked again with batons and tear gas. At least four of them were detained.