Talking to Sudanese feminists and rights activists, one often hears them criticise the regime for its tendency to persecute women. And the evidence they offer is compelling. A recent statement by the Arab Alliance for Sudan marking the release and subsequent re-arrest of a Sudanese Christian woman accused of apostasy, said that this might be the best-known instance but it was only one of many instances of the persecution of women in Sudan. According to records kept by the Khartoum police, 43,000 complaints were filed in 2013 against women accused of “indecent dress,” a punishable offence according to Article 152 of the Sudanese Criminal Code. Security police chief Amer Abdel-Rahman speaking to the newspaper Al-Mijhar said that his department had 17,000 young women sign pledges not to wear “revealing outfits” in the future. The total number of women who had signed such pledges was 51,000, he said. Moatassem Hakim, a key figure in the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-North), said that women in Sudan could face stiff punishments for dress-related offenses. But their troubles were not only confined to what they chose to wear. “Poor women who sell tea or edibles in the street are chased away by the police for selling home-brewed alcohol or mixing with men,” Hakim pointed out. “The reason South Sudan broke away from the North was Khartoum's insistence on implementing Islamic Sharia law, as well as its refusal to split oil revenues fairly,” he added. Mubarak Al-Fadel, a key figure in the Ummah Party, said that the penal code for 1991, which the government claims to be consistent with Sharia, resulted in the imprisonment of tens of thousands of women from South Sudan and Nubia, whose culture does not involve a ban on the production of alcoholic beverages. In 2012, a Khartoum-based paper published the story of Sylvia Kashef, a 16-year-old Christian girl from the South, who was given 50 lashes because she wore clothes perceived as too revealing. Mariam Al-Sadeq, wife of the Ummah Party leader, said that Sudanese women were subjected to 1.6 million lashes in 2010 alone. “There are more than 40,000 women who underwent trials for public order offences in one year. If each received 40 lashes, the total is 1.6 million lashes in one year,” Al-Sadeq remarked. “This treatment is intended to humiliate and has nothing to do with Islamic Sharia,” she added. Recordings of women being flogged are often posted on YouTube. Sudanese rights activist Rasha Awad recalls one tape in which “what we see is a young girl of an indeterminate age being flogged by more than one man. She is crying while the onlookers are laughing. This is a disaster by all accounts. A worse disaster is the position of the regime, which defends such acts,” Awad stated. Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir said he had “no problem” with this tape, as his government had no intention of “being lax on Sharia.” Speaking in Al-Gadaref after the secession of South Sudan, Al-Bashir was almost relieved that the country had lost its ethnic diversity. “Sudan can now implement Islamic Sharia fully without worrying about the so-called cultural diversity,” he said. Awad pointed out that although the laws were strict on women's attire, they offered women no protection against rape. “The criminal code and the public order code penalise women for their attire, but the same laws do not protect women from rape. Sudanese laws are the least strict in the Arab region when it comes to rape,” she said. “The law is a main area in which extremist groups satisfy their urge to persecute women,” Awad added. The Sudanese feminist movement launched a campaign entitled “No to the Repression of Women” in 2009 immediately after the trial of journalist Lobna Hussein for wearing trousers in public. The court ruled that the trousers were “indecent” and fined her 500 Sudanese pounds, which she refused to pay. The Sudanese Journalists Association later paid the fine to defuse the situation. Al-Shafie Al-Khedr, a well-known leftist activist, said that the regime was afraid of bad publicity. “The regime doesn't dare to implement the penalty of flogging against a woman if her case is taken up by the press. This was true for Mariam, who was accused of apostasy, and Amira, who was accused of dressing indecently. Sudan is one of the strictest countries in enforcing Sharia laws inspired by the strict interpretations of the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said. “The regime wants to keep people busy with matters of public morality, such as the hijab and women's clothes because it doesn't want people to focus on its own failures,” Al-Khedr added. Sudan lost two-thirds of its oil revenues after the secession of South Sudan. It is engaged in a civil war on several fronts, including the Blue Nile, Nubia and Darfur. According to UN records, nearly 7,000 women have been raped in Darfur by the Janjawid militia, which is backed by the regime. Mahjoub Mohamed Ali, a lawyer and activist, said that thousands of women had lost their husbands during the wars instigated by the regime and were struggling to support their children. “The civil war in South Sudan turned thousands of households into fatherless families, forcing women to become the sole providers for their children. Now the same thing is happening in Darfur,” Ali noted. Fayez Al-Silk, editor of the media outlet Ajras Al-Horrya, said that women were the main victims of the regime's military and morality wars. “The deteriorating conditions hit women first. The beleaguered regime is raising moral issues and targeting women in order to cover up its problems. Women are paying the price for the regime's failures,” he remarked.
