Sudan

الخرطوم في 9 مارس 2011 — نفذت قوات الشرطة السودانية حملة اعتقالات واسعة وسط ناشطات وحقوقيين تجمعوا بمدينة امدرمان الثلاثاء للاحتفال باليوم العالمى للمراة الذى يصادف الثامن من مارس فى كل عام والتنديد بالعنف الممارس ضد النساء فى السودان. وتبنت مبادرة "لا لقهر النساء" الدعوة للتجمهر بميدان المدرسة الاهلية القريب من منزل الزعيم السودانى المعروف اسماعيل الازهرى. ورفعت المحتجات لافتات تندد بالاغتصاب والاهانات التى تلاحق النساء فى السودان مطالبين السلطات الحكومية بالحد مما اسموه العنف ضد المراة

Sudanese anti-riot police on Tuesday arrested and beat dozens of women activists shortly after they attempted to stage a protest in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman against the alleged rape of a young female activist last month and right abuses, manifesting Khartoum’s growing anxiety over dissent. Women protestors gathered in a public square in central Omdurman on Tuesday and lifted banners demanding the authorities to cease "violence against women," citing the case Saffiya Ishaq, a young female activist who appeared in a Youtube video last month accusing members of Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services of gang-raping her after she participated in anti-government protests late in January.

Rape and sexual assaults: the National Congress Party uses the weapons of the Darfur war against the women and girls of Khartoum. Tens of thousands of Sudanese women and young girls in Darfur and in the south of Sudan were exposed to crimes of gender based violence, including rape and sexual abuse that were practiced by the National Congress Party (NCP) for more than two decades. Now, and following the victory of racial and sexual cleansing policies which drove the South of Sudan to separation and could drive Darfur on a similar path, the regime of the NCP is employing the weapon of rape and sexual abuse against women and girls in their peaceful struggle. The NCP’s security forces targeted the women and young girls who took part in the recent demonstrations in Sudan, asking for justice, peace, democracy and an end to discrimination.

John Garang, the revered late leader of the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Movement, once said that women are the "the poorest of the poor and the marginalised of the marginalised". As the reality of an independent South Sudan approaches, the region's women have vowed they will not remain second class citizens. Margaret Michael Modi, the head of women’s affairs in Central Equatoria State, cast her vote on the first day. "The first day (of the vote) we did not sleep. I went to the polling station and women were crying as they cast their vote," she told IPS over the phone from the southern capital, Juba.