Anne’s Reflections on ‘Halima’s Flogging’

Anne here. I woke up this morning to new video files of a flogging in Sudan, sent to me by my friends in Khartoum. The video has been published on Facebook, but is continually taken down after complaints by the Online Sudanese National Security Unit and their Islamists friends for being offensive and violent.

How ironic that the very thugs who perpetrate the violence against about 40,000 women a year in Sudan for ‘offenses’ as minor as not covering their heads, then turn to Facebook and YouTube, complaining that the video showing them flogging women is violent.

Amira Osman Back In Khartoum Court September 19

Sudanese engineer and businesswoman Amira Osman is due back in a Khartoum court on September 19. Her judge was a no-show earlier this month. Amira says she is prepared to be flogged to defend the right to leave her hair uncovered in defiance of the ‘Taliban’-like law Article 152 of Sudan’s morality laws, instituted after the 1989 Islamist-backed coup by current president Omar-al-Bashir.

Our commitment to supporting the women of Sudan to end the brutal flogging of tens of thousands of women each year in Sudan is just part of our daily mission at AOC.

The raw files of Halima’s Flogging, this morning’s video are being installed on Vimeo, where they will be safe from the the Online Sudanese National Security Unit and their Islamists friends. Anne of Carversville has a policy of PUBLISHING these videos of women being flogged in Sudan. We exist to tell the stories of violence against women worldwide, even when they are wrenching to watch.

Seriously, men of Sudan’s National Security Police. MAN UP!!!

If you are so fast to flog women for no good reason, be manly enough to take public credit for your actions. There’s nothing worse than a group of weak men running for cover when the digital world holds them accountable for brutalizing women.

Equally difficult to understand is the psychological and emotional humiliation experienced by women who have been flogged in Sudan. Their scars are physical but also deeply emotional.

Within this context, AOC shares the reflections of Sudanese lawyer Lana Mhgoub. Lana has requested that I publish her name but not her location. I will only say that she is safe from the incessant laughter of Sudan’s Islamist morality police, as they crack their whips against Sudanese women — once the shining stars of women’s advancement in North Africa. ~ Anne Enke

Lana Mhgoub: My Flogging Story

I feel sorry about what has happened to engineer Amira and I am really upset about what is happening to women in Sudan every day, all this persecution and violations of women’s rights and crack down on their freedoms by the barbaric Islamists regime of Sudan.

Engineer Amira is not the first victim of the Public Order Police. Every day dozens of these incidents happen and hundreds of women are arrested for no reason than being a female wearing pants or you do not cover your hair with a scarf in public.

The method of arresting (women) is very humiliating. It is conducted by Public Order Police Officers or by any male in the street that following “Hisba” system. It is a system created by the government according to Sharia Laws; that allows any Islamists to submit a complaint against any woman who does not put her scarf over her hair in Public or wearing trousers, or for no reason at all. He could be having a rough day or just decided to harass that woman.

Personally, I was arrested twice on the past and I was flogged once. Two years ago while I was walking with my girlfriends in the streets of Khartoum, we were stopped by Public Police Officers and accused of violation women dress codes then we were tossed in the public order police truck like animals. In the Public Police Station, the prosecutor never listened to us or allowed us a fair trial or access to a lawyer. We were flogged in a very cruel and painful way in public. The officers who flogged us used every degrading word in the dictionary to humiliate us and laughed at our pain and misery. I fled from my country after that for fear of persecution and because I am tired of being terrorized by Public Order Police and “Hisba” men every time I walk in the streets of Khartoum.

When I was in Sudan, I worked as a lawyer and I saw these kind of cases many times every day. I saw the horror in the eyes of young girls whom arrested and subjected to these inhuman and humiliating systematic violations of their rights as human beings and as citizens by public police officers. Most of these girls refuse to ask for a fair trial for the fear of scandal and the public shame of their families by the conservative society in Sudan. One girl told me: “I walk out of my house in front of my family wearing these clothes every day, I am not ashamed of myself, but the issue of the arrest and the trial will outrage my family. People will start talking and nobody will believe that I am arrested over clothes choices. In their minds, people will assume other matters involving honor, or even worst a case of prostitution! And this will stigmatize my family forever so I will accept the flogging rather than ask for a public trial that could spark rumors.” I could not say anything to her as her friends in suffer wiped their tears and bent their backs to the same officer who arrested them for flogging.

Amira Osman and Lubna Hussein are strong women. They said no to injustices and sacrificed their own safety and reputation in order to save Sudanese women and defend their rights to walk in the streets without the fear of prosecution over clothes choices. They deserve maximum respect and solidarity. ~ Lana Mhgoub