Sudan: El Gezira farm leaders summoned for sixth day

The security services in El Gezira have continued to summon five of the leaders of the El Gezira and El Managil Farmers Association every day for the last six days. The leaders are obliged to report to the offices of the security services in Khartoum North, Wad Madani, and El Managil.

One of the leaders of the alliance told Radio Dabanga: “The daily summons of Hasabo Ibrahim, Zeinelabdin Bargawi, Kamal El Nima, El Amin Abdelnabi, and Abdelraouf Omar is aims at paralysing the leadership movement and disrupting Association’s work. It is also causing health, psychological, and financial fatigue to the leaders.”

He considered that as a political measure aiming at continuing the destruction of El Gezira Scheme.

He called on the security apparatus to stop the daily summons of the leaders immediately or to bring them to a fair trial

Unknown reasons

One of the leaders recently revealed documents about the authorities’ obstruction of the establishment of a cooperative farmers’ movement at El Gezira Agricultural Scheme. “This is a clear attempt to obstruct the Association’s efforts to re-establish the Farmers Union,” Asim Kanoun, a member of the Farmers Alliance Secretariat, told Radio Dabanga on Sunday.

He said that the targeting of the association’s leaders started after the members agreed on the re-establishment of “a genuine farmers union in the region” during a conference in mid-October. The NISS has not provided any reasons for the repeated summons.

Yesterday, a member of the farmers’ association told this station that the repeated summons of the leaders would not scare them. “The issue of the farmers will not end with arrest, because this confirms its fairness.”

The El Gezira and El Managil Agricultural Scheme, located between the Blue and White Niles, south of Khartoum, used to be one of the world’s largest irrigation projects. Early September 2015, the Agriculture Ministry amended the El Gezira Scheme Act, aimed at transferring land ownership to the private sector and foreign investors. The Farmers Union was replaced by ‘work associations’.