Sudan is attempting a most profound transformation. Before the April 2019 ousting of racist, Islamist, Arab-supremacist President Omar al-Bashir, Sudan had been one of the most corrupt and violent persecutors of Christians and black Africans anywhere in the world.
Between December 2018 and April 2019 – in what must go down in history as one of the greatest people-movements of the early 21st Century – multitudes of Sudanese, led primarily by doctors and other members of the Sudanese Professionals Association, rose up to declare, “Enough!”.
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‘New Sudan’ in sight, but not yet in hand,
by Elizabeth Kendal, 15 May 2019
http://rlprayerbulletin.blogspot.com/2019/05/rlpb-502-new-sudan-in-sight-but-not-yet.html
Even after the military toppled the regime (seizing power for itself), the protesters bravely stood their ground. Declaring, “No! Still not enough!” they demanded civilian rule.
In the pre-dawn hours of 3 June 2019, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (also known as Hemeti) deployed Sudanese military troops and his Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to attack peaceful protesters conducting a “sit-in” in protest of continued military rule. At least 120 unarmed youths were massacred; many more were beaten, shot and raped. [Report by Human Rights Watch]. https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/11/18/they-were-shouting-kill-them/sudans-violent-crackdown-protesters-khartoum
To avoid more bloodshed, a compromise was reached thanks primarily to pressure from international community, in particular the African Union and Ethiopia. On Sunday 4 August 2019, representatives from Sudan’s ruling Transitional Military Council (TMC) and the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) signed a Constitutional Charter (CC) which, theoretically, should pave the way for democratic transition. An 11-member Sovereignty Council, comprising both military and civilian personnel, was established as a transitional administration ahead of elections slated for late 2022.
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Divine Help Needed if New Sudan is to be Realised,
by Elizabeth Kendal, 21 August 2019.
REFORMS
On 7 September 2019, in a televised interview on the Al-Arabiya Network, Sudan's new Minister of Religious Affairs, Nasr al-Din Mufreh, explained that Sudan is a pluralistic nation ruled by secular law. In an interview published on 3 November 2019 in the international Arabic newspaper, Asharq Al-Awsat, Mufreh said Sudan would fight extremism in mosques and empower women in society. He reiterated his invitation to Sudanese Jews (inviting them to return as citizens) and lamented past persecution of Christians, saying “Christians and all people of other faiths and religions are free to practise their rituals”.
In December 2019 the transitional government declared Christmas Day a national public holiday.
On 11 March 2020, Minister of Religious Affairs, Nasr al-Din Mufreh, signed an order abolishing the committees imposed on churches under former president Omar al-Bashir.
On 10 July 2020, Sudan’s Justice Minister, Nasredeen Abdulbari tweeted: “The Human Rights and Justice System Reform Commission Act 2020 has been signed, [along with] the Miscellaneous Amendments (Fundamental Rights and Freedoms) Act 2020, the Anti-Informatics Crime (Amendment) Act 2020 and the Criminal Code (Amendment) 2020. The commission established under the law passed will lead a comprehensive and profound process of reforming the human rights and justice system, which during the years of the regime has experienced ruin - an unprecedented devastation in the history of Sudan.”
NOTE: The Miscellaneous Amendments (Fundamental Rights and Freedoms) Act 2020 removes a raft of Sharia-based provisions, amongst them: flogging is abolished, and apostasy (previously a capital crime) is now decriminalised.
In a televised interview on 11 July 2020, the Justice Minister confirmed that changes to the law will ensure all citizens enjoy religious freedom and equality in citizenship and before the law. “We have dropped all the articles that had led to any kind of discrimination,” he said. “We assure our people that the legal reformation will continue until we drop all the laws violating the human rights in Sudan.”
Led by their fundamentalist clerics, Sudan’s Islamists took to the streets in protest, cursing Justice Minister Nasredeen Abdulbari as an infidel, and calling for jihad against the government of Prime Minister Hamdok (who had already survived one assassination attempt).
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PEACE
For decades, Khartoum waged war against the politically marginalised and long-persecuted non-Arabs and non-Muslims of Sudan’s periphery. This war eventually led to the break-up of the state and the secession of the predominately Christian, resource-rich south. Even before South Sudan’s secession was complete, Khartoum was waging genocidal war against its resource-rich “new south” – Abyei, South Kordofan’s Nuba Mountains, and Blue Nile – and subsequently, in Darfur.
Nuba Mountains: During the 1990s, Khartoum waged a genocidal jihad against the mostly Christian tribes of the Nuba Mountains; a jihad legitimised by a fatwa (religious ruling) from Khartoum’s leading Islamic clerics. It is estimated that at least 100,000 Nuba died as a result of government attacks in 1992-1993 alone.
See: Background: the Nuba Mountains of southern Kordofan.
US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
On Monday 31 August 2020, after nearly a full year of talks, representatives from Sudan’s Sovereignty Council initialled a peace agreement with representatives from the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), a coalition of rebel groups that have been fighting Khartoum’s Arab-Islamist regime for years. The deal gives the rebels positions in the transitional government and extends greater autonomy to territories under their control. Humanitarian aid groups – long-banned from rebel-held regions – will be invited to return. Rebel fighters will be required to lay down their arms or join the ranks of the as-yet unreformed Sudan Armed Forces (their long-time enemy); a provision many suspect will prove unworkable at this time. A final agreement was signed in Juba, South Sudan, on Saturday 3 October 2020.
However, two groups under the SRF umbrella refused to sign. While the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army-North (Agar-Arman faction) did sign, the main faction led by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu – which is based in the Nuba Mountains and represents the interests of the Nuba peoples – refused on the grounds that the agreement does not address the “root causes” of the conflict: i.e. Islam and centralisation (Arab hegemony). Abdel Wahid al-Nour (a lawyer), who leads a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army in Darfur, also refused to sign for the same reason.
Over 2 to 4 September 2020, PM Hamdok and al-Hilu met in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. On the evening of Thursday 3 September, it was announced that the parties had agreed on the necessity of a full political settlement which addresses the root causes of conflict (Islam and centralisation). The government agreed “in principle” to officially separate religion from the state, ending nearly 40 years of Islamic rule in Sudan. Furthermore, the SPLA-N (al-Hilu faction) would be permitted to keep its weapons until “security arrangements are finalised and religion and state are separated”.
On Sunday 28 March 2021, the Sudanese government and the SPLA-N (al-Hilu faction) signed a “Declaration of Principles” which paves the way for a final peace agreement by guaranteeing freedom of worship to all while separating religion and the state.
The declaration stated that both sides agreed to “the establishment of a civil, democratic federal state in Sudan, wherein, the freedom of religion, the freedom of belief and religious practices and worship shall be guaranteed to all Sudanese people by separating the identities of culture, religion, ethnicity and religion from the state.”
“No religion shall be imposed on anyone and the state shall not adopt official religion.”
With this breakthrough talks can proceed towards a final peace settlement.
In early-mid 2019, at the height of the protest movement, the protestors were encouraged to illustrate their demands, hopes and dreams in murals, which subsequently proliferated across the city. The protesters’ hope and insistence that Sudan be recognised as multi-racial and multi-religious, and that it be free and democratic, was beyond inspirational.
See: In pictures: The art fuelling Sudan’s revolution.
By Mohanad Hashim, BBC Africa, Khartoum, 5 May 2019
However: After nearly 40 years of Islamist-military rule, the difficulty of freeing Sudan from the grip of a thoroughly entrenched and heavily invested Islamist Deep State cannot be overstated. Sudan’s Forces for Freedom and Change deserve and will need all the help they can get.
Additional news source specialising in Sudan:
SUDAN Research, Analysis and Advocacy, by Eric Reeves: https://sudanreeves.org/
