For Sudanese dissidents, path to peace is social media

Share

The arrest of Taj al-Sair, like most arrests of political dissidents in Sudan, might have gone unnoticed and ignored. But this one was different: It was videotaped by a supporter and quickly posted on YouTube.

The video shows the young activist at a bus station in Khartoum, telling a large crowd of curious onlookers to vote against Sudan's ruling party. In the midst of his speech, he is surrounded by police and hauled away.

The video has been watched more than 15,000 times in the past month. It's the latest technological weapon against Sudan's regime by a student-led group called Girifna - a name that translates as "We are fed up."

It might be far from the Green Revolution of Iran, but the elections in Sudan have spawned their own group of young rebels who use the Internet to spread their mutiny. Girifna is using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, cellphone messages, homemade videos and "flash mobilizations" on the streets to drum up opposition to President Omar al-Bashir.

They estimate they have nearly 18,000 supporters in various branches across the country. Their Facebook group alone has more than 6,000 members.

Those numbers are not an immediate threat to Mr. al-Bashir, who is expected to win the elections easily, but they are an annoying thorn in his side. In the five months since the group was founded, 18 of its members have been arrested, including two who were tortured, the group says. When most opposition parties in northern Sudan decided to boycott the elections, it was left to groups such as Girifna to keep the elections alive. The young activists have persuaded thousands of people to register for the elections and to vote.

"We don't want change through war - we want change through elections," said Nagi Musa, one of the group's founders.

"In the past, there was a wall of fear, but we want to break it. We don't work in secret - we're loud, and we're telling the truth. A lot of people were giving up on politics, but now they feel they can do something if they work together."

Mr. Musa is an earnest 22-year-old medical student whose heroes are Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. He lives with his parents in a house in Omdurman, across the Nile from Khartoum, and he admits he fears for his safety as he travels around Sudan to build the movement. He says he has been repeatedly threatened by supporters of the ruling party, who warn him to "wait until the elections are over."

Sudan is still a country of "ghost houses," where dissidents can disappear into unofficial prisons for months at a time. One of Girifna's members, a 18-year-old female student named Batoal, was taken to a "ghost house" by security agents who detained her when she was handing out the group's pamphlets on the street. Although she was released after several hours, the agents threatened to rape her and frame her as a prostitute, Mr. Musa said.

Last week, about 40 members of Girifna held a brief demonstration outside the National Elections Commission, carrying a coffin to symbolize what it said was the death of fairness in the elections. After the protest, security agents followed the activists and threatened them, Mr. Musa said.

Sudan's political freedoms have improved a little since 2005 when the government signed a deal with former rebels from southern Sudan, he said. But he expects a crackdown after the elections. "The security forces still have full authority to beat and kill with impunity," he said. "They have eyes everywhere. They can take you into a room and do whatever they like to you, and you don't even know who they are."

The group does not take a position on whether Mr. al-Bashir should be sent to The Hague to face trial on a war-crimes indictment by the International Criminal Court for his actions in Darfur. But it considers him responsible for the deaths of many Sudanese opposition activists in the past.

Mr. Musa says he is disappointed by Sudan's opposition parties. Instead of consistently opposing Mr. al-Bashir, he said, the parties have made deals with him, failed to take the elections seriously, and failed to monitor the elections to watch for vote-rigging. "There's been a lot of fraud," he said. "Our people are calling us every few minutes with reports of problems."

The government, meanwhile, has begun to learn from Girifna's tactics. When it arrested one of the group's activists recently, it threatened to put naked photos of him on Facebook to discredit him, Mr. Musa said.

The government has also printed pamphlets in the same distinctive orange colour as Girifna's leaflets to confuse the voters, he said. And it has created its own citizens group - with a name that translates as "We are happy."