♦ This week’s news in brief ♦
A compact weekly digest of Dabanga Sudan’s highlights of the news from Darfur and Sudan
A compact weekly digest of Dabanga Sudan's highlights of the news from Darfur and Sudan
♦ Detained opposition leaders 'maltreated' in Sudan prison
January 30 – 2018 KHARTOUM Opposition party leaders who are in detention following the recent protests, are subject to physical torture, a spokesman for the Sudanese Communist Party reported. following witness reports.
Communist Party leaders Mohamed Mukhtar El Khateeb, Siddig Yousef, and of the National Umma Party, Co-Vice-President Mohamed Abdallah El Doma and Secretary-General Sara Nugdallah are kept in detention while some of them suffer from chronic diseases. “They are held at an unknown location and not allowed visits by lawyers or family.” According to witness reports the party gathered from people who were also in detention, El Khateeb was forced to sit on an iron chair facing the wall for more than four hours a day.
Again this week, people took to the streets in towns and cities in Sudan in spontaneous or organised protests against the soaring prices and new taxes. Politicians and journalists present at these demonstrations were detained.
Various opposition groups in Sudan have expressed their support of a mass rally scheduled to take place in Khartoum on Wednesday in protest against the recent austerity measures and the crackdown on civic liberties in the country.
♦ Israelis protest deportation of Sudanese asylum seekers
January 26 – 2018 TEL AVIV Israel’s hard asylum policy against African migrants has recently been expanded to the forced deportation of African – including Sudanese – asylum seekers to Uganda and Rwanda. Recent protests in Tel Aviv have grown in size, as not only migrants but also Israelis demand the government to stop the plan.
Last month, the legislative branch of the Israeli government approved an amendment to the so-called “Infiltrator’s Law”, mandating the closure of the Holot detention facility and the forced deportations of Eritrean and Sudanese migrants and asylum seekers. The deportations would start in March. The voluntary departure plan might result in the indefinite detention of thousands of Eritrean and Sudanese men in Israel.
The protests in Tel Aviv aimed against the deportation of African asylum seekers in the past days have attracted wide attention after more than 1,000 doctors and medical staff signed petitions. Also a group of Israeli Holocaust survivors have spoken out against the controversial legislation that passes their expulsion, and urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the deportation.
There are approximately 38,000 African migrants and asylum seekers in Israel, according to the Interior Ministry. About 72 percent are Eritrean and 20 percent are Sudanese, and the vast majority arrived between 2006 and 2012. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has spoken out against the policies, which also include the detention of asylum seekers.
More news from Radio Dabanga:
SPLM-N declares ceasefire in South Kordofan
January 30 – 2018 KHARTOUM The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), chaired by Abdelaziz Adam El Hilu, has declared a unilateral cessation of hostilities in the South Kordofan region for four months. This weekend the…
January 30 – 2018 ZALINGEI The disarmament campaign in the states of Darfur draws to a close. Militiamen who carried out the collection of illegal weapons and cars have reportedly refused to hand in the vehicles that were provided to…
January 29 – 2018 SARAF OMRA Six detainees in the Saraf Omra Prison in North Darfur have reportedly been subjected to torture by paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).Multiple sources told Radio Dabanga that native…
January 29 – 2018 KHARTOUM Officers of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) confiscated the printed editions of Akhbar El Watan, the mouthpiece of the Sudanese Congress Party, and the Communist Party El Midan on Sunday…
January 29 – 2018 EL FASHER The UN-AU Mission in Darfur (Unamid) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Government of Sudan on Sunday concerning the opening of a temporary operating base in Golo, in Jebel Marra in Central Darfur…
HRW: Civilians attacked, students and journalists detained in 2017
January 26 – 2018 NEW YORK In the past year Sudan’s human rights record continued to be defined by government repression and violations of basic civil and political rights, restriction of religious freedoms, and disregard for obligations on civilian protection under…
January 25 – 2018 KHARTOUM The pharmaceutical sector in Sudan is witnessing an unprecedented price increase by more than 300 per cent and scarcity of a number of chronic disease treatments and life-saving medicines. On Wednesday a number of pharmacies in…
January 25 – 2018 EL FASHER Dr Ihsan Fegeiri, coordinator of the No to Oppression of Women activist group in Sudan, has voiced her group’s outrage at reports of arbitrary flogging of women and girls by members of the military police on the streets and in the…
January 24 – 2018 KHARTOUM Student Asim Omar, who has been sentenced to death in a case surrounded by controversy, has been on a hunger strike for the last three days after the administration in Khartoum’s notorious Kober prison issued a decision to shackle…
January 24 – 2018 SARAF OMRA / UM BRAMBETA A 16-year-old has been raped, allegedly by a member of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia near Um Jahara village north Saraf Omra on Monday. In Um Brambeta in South Kordofan, a 50-year-old farmer was…
January 24 – 2018 KHARTOUM Sudan’s Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour confirmed today that a group of Sudanese nationals who were kidnapped and tortured by human trafficking gangs in Libya were released from their captors by Libyan authorities late last night…
| This digest is an excerpt from the weekly Darfur & Sudan News Update. Subscribe here to receive the newsletter directly in your inbox |
and then