يوميات الثورة السودانية – الجزء الثانى

Quote: An Open Letter from GIRIFNA to the UN Independent Human Rights Expert Dear Mr. Mashood Baderin, When we found out you were coming to Sudan to investigate the human rights situation, so we decided to write you a letter. We know for a fact that you would not be able to see us– we would not want to meet you if we had the choice, for our own security. First, we would like to thank you for visiting Sudan and we wish you a productive stay. Secondly, we would like to tell you our story, not as a movement, but as a people. When 30 men from the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) raided the house of a female activist last June, she thought she was going to be executed. They broke the bathroom’s door, barged into her room grabbed her by the arm and terrorized her family. Her mother was so shocked, she pleaded until she was allowed to accompany her. She would never forget the scene, her mother was holding her and telling the NISS officers to kill her instead of her daughter. They took her mother home, but kept the young lady for nearly two months without a trial. She was subjected to psychological abuse, long interrogations and inhumane detention conditions. She pleaded to get sanitary pads, a necessity for women her age. She always went to bed hungry, she missed her family tremendously. When NISS officers raided the house of one of GIRIFNA’s members, his family helped him escape, only for the officers to arrest his brother and two uncles to pressure him to turn himself in. He was on the run for weeks before leaving the country, his brother was detained for weeks and tortured, psychologically and physically. His family was harassed and intimidated, their house was raided. Another activist in his early twenties was kept in solitary confinement for two months without a trial or access to a judge. He said he would rather be executed or kept in detention with other inmates for 10 years, or anything else other than solitary confinement. Jalila Khamis, a 45-year-old mother of 6, a teacher and a Nuba women human rights defender was in detention for nine months before she was given access to a judge or a trial. Her crime was that she spoke out publicly about the State’s atrocities against civilians in the Nuba Mountains. In Sudan, if you seek to expose the human rights violations carried out by the Sudanese government, you are putting yourself in grave danger. If you are not detained, the security forces make sure you lose your livelihood. As a result the number of journalists who are harassed or banned from writing in all newspapers, because of their strong stance against oppression and lack of civil freedoms, continues to increase. Even citizen journalists have not been spared. If you are not arrested, your house is raided, many activists have lost money, laptops, cell-phones, gold and other valuable items that were confiscated during home raids by NISS. If you are not interrogated, you are subjected to rape and torture. We have documented the cases of activists of both genders who were subjected to rape and torture. One activist was shown a bloody piece of cloth and told that he will face castration, and this cloth has an amputated male organ. It is always difficult to imagine that we are living in the 21st century and not in Stalin’s Russia or Hitler’s Germany. GIRIFNA recorded one case of an attempted suicide during detention last year. This is how bad detention is for activists. Since this current government came to power, hundreds of thousands have perished. The government fought wars in the Southern part of the country and is now fighting rebels in Darfur, Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan. The people of Sudan are caught in the middle, the women are gang-rapped by the Sudanese army and the men are killed in cold blood. The government insists that the number of deaths in Darfur is 10,000, yet every Darfuri, somehow, has lost a loved one in the ten-year old conflict. In Southern Kordofan, our people are being starved, they are hiding in caves, thinking that they would be safe from the aerial bombardment by their own government, yet, they are not. Mr.Baderin, we know you are here to meet individuals from the civil society, but we want to tell you that the Sudanese civil society is cracked down upon regularly. In the in the last two months of 2012, five civil society organizations were closed down and accused of espionage. We can reaffirm that they were involved in cultural activities, capacity-building trainings for youth and documentation of human rights among other things. They were trying to give the people of Sudan a voice, and to project that voice to the world. Other organizations are intimidated, many civil society members have fled Sudan due to continued pressures from NISS. So, we decided to write this letter hoping that we would be given an opportunity to tell you the story of our country. We are exhausted, Mr. Baderin, we have been subjected to horrors, but we persevere to tell the truth. We hope you listen to us. Thank you. GIRIFNA