Sudan ruling party’s Eid charity move criticised as ‘hypocritical’

Activists and journalists on social media have strongly criticised the campaign carried out by the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) in some areas of Khartoum to give the poor and the needy sacrifice lamb meat during Eid El Adha.

They have described the campaign as “hypocrisy that contradicts the values of sharia, which encourages hidden charity and human rights, which prohibits the publication of pictures of vulnerable groups”.

On Tuesday, the first day of Eid El Adha, President Al Bashir launched his Ashariyoun campaign at Kober area, which offers part of a sacrifice lamb to the poor and needy.

Activists said the campaign was “an attempt by NCP delegates to beautify their faces after impoverishing the citizens, plundering the country’s wealth and destroying the economy and means of production.”

A critical cleric said that what they did has nothing to do with charity, but that is the harm, which is forbidden in religion.

‘Crude political propaganda’

Writer and journalist, editor-in-chief of El Baath newspaper, Mohamed Diyaa, said the portrayal of the poor and the needy in this way humiliates them, harms their feelings, and seriously violates the Sudanese customs and traditions of social solidarity. He described the initiative as a crude political propaganda and held the government policies responsible for the widening of poverty.

Some of the members of the NCP have defended the campaign, as the deputy head of the party in Khartoum state, Mohamed Hatim Suleiman, said that the campaign came to serve the people and ease the burdens of living, while Ibrahim El Siddig, the head of the media sector of the NCP, said that the circulated pictures were for the campaign cadres, rather than of the poor and the needy.