Why Do People Want Change in Sudan? A barbaric Penal Code is One Reason
ICC Note
Sudan’s laws are based on Islamic laws. The law calls for crucifixion of Muslims who convert to Christianity and other religions.
By Eric Reeves
07/16/2012 Sudan (SSNA)-Hudud, a specific category of punishment within the penal code of sharia (Islamic law), is unspeakably barbaric in Sudan. And this barbarism has not diminished in recent years, despite claims in some quarters that Islamism is on the wane in Sudan, still a vast and highly various country. The National Islamic Front/National Congress Party (NIC/NCP) regime is as committed as ever to an extremely aggressive interpretation of sharia, as well as its uniform imposition. Under the penal provisions of hudud in Sudan, women are regularly sentenced to be flogged (a punishment that can be fatal) for crimes ranging from brewing beer to support a family to wearing insufficiently “modest” clothing. Even more shocking, women—and girls—are sentenced to be stoned to death under Sudanese hudud for adultery. Although sentences are typically commuted in the judicial proceedings, commutation is entirely arbitrary and seems to depend upon the degree of international attention that is focused on a given case.The execution itself is carried out by a crowd throwing stones at the victim, who is buried up to her chest with her hands tied. It is a slow, grim, and agonizing death.
Cross-amputation—the amputation of the right hand and left foot—is almost incomprehensibly cruel, yet it too persists. A case from several years ago gained prominence in the human rights world because the sentence was handed out to a 16-year-old boy. Most of these cases go unreported, but not always (the link here is to a horrific photograph of four Darfuri men who have had the sentence of cross-amputation imposed; I urge caution in deciding whether or not to view this disturbing photograph). There is no sign that the imposition of this brutally destructive assault on human flesh and spirit will end soon.
Crucifixion is also a punishment under Sudanese hudud. It is the punishment for apostasy (leaving the faith of Islam), but other crimes as well. The African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies reported on the cases of seven men last November:
On 28 November 2011, Judge Altyeb Alamin Elbashir of the Special Criminal Court in North Darfur sentenced seven individuals to death and ordered them crucified following their execution. The purpose of crucifixion is to draw attention to their crimes. The group, affiliated with the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), was on trial for a carjacking committed on 3 May 2010.
If the current regime in Khartoum and its president, Omar al-Bashir, have their way, all this will continue. Having allowed the South to secede a year ago, the regime confronts increasing pressures from both the more radical Islamists and the more thuggish of military hardliners. These pressures are reflected in al-Bashir’s promise about Sudan’s new constitution and the laws that will govern all Sudanese, Muslim and non-Muslim alike:
Sudan constitution to be “100 percent Islamic”: BashirPresident Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Saturday Sudan’s next constitution would be “100 percent Islamic” to set an example for neighbouring countries, some of which have seen religious parties gain power after popular uprisings. The secession of mostly non-Muslim South Sudan a year ago sparked predictions that Sudan, which hosted former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, would start implementing Islamic law more strictly. In a speech to leaders of the mystical Islamic Sufi tradition in Khartoum, Bashir suggested Sudan’s new, post-secession constitution could help guide the region’s political transformation. “We want to present a constitution that serves as a template to those around us. And our template is clear, a 100 percent Islamic constitution, without communism or secularism or Western (influences),” said Bashir. (Reuters [Khartoum], July 7, 2012)
This is the president of the regime that the Obama administration believes is capable of “carrying out reform via constitutional democratic measures” in Sudan. But without regime change, and the success of the current uprising, al-Bashir has given us all too clear an understanding of the future of “constitutional reform” and source of “law” for all in Sudan, Muslim and non-Muslim alike.
At the same time, one of the most remarkable features of the “Arab Spring” now spreading throughout Sudan is the increasingly courageous and adamant stand of women against the brutal excesses of Sudanese sharia (other, even more uniformly Muslim countries follow versions of sharia that are not nearly so severe). Women have been at the center of the year-old resistance movement Girifna, and have made their voices heard in increasingly public fashion. One of the videos linked below provides a clandestine view of women exuberantly protesting flogging while actually in prison. It is the very spirit of political resistance to tyranny, political and religious.
It is worth noting that in Sudan, the regime’s respect for sharia does not extend to forbidding torture of the most savage sort. Having read numerous personal statements by victims of torture as part of my work on Sudanese asylum cases, and having spoken with some of these victims, I find an obscene disconnect between the Quran’s repeated speaking in “the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful,” and the realities of Kober Prison and the various “ghost houses” in which Sudanese continue to endure unspeakable pain and suffering—brutal torture that is sanctioned by not a single passage in the Quran (see Appendix). I will not include their terrifying accounts here, but should anyone doubt the extremity of torture in Sudan, I would urge a reading of Chapter 20 of Halima Bashir’s searing memoir, Tears of the Desert (2008).
Nor should we forget that the Khartoum regime’s version of sharia is imposed on all, whether or not they are Muslim. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom found in its most recent assessment (March 2012) that violations of religious freedom in Sudan included:
…the criminalization, subject to the death penalty, of apostasy; the efforts by the government in Khartoum to impose its restrictive interpretation of Shari’ah (Islamic law) on Muslims and non-Muslims; attacks and threats against the Christian community; the application of the Public Order Act and related laws and use of floggings for undefined acts of “indecency” and “immorality”; the denial of public religious expression and persuasion of Muslims by non-Muslims, while allowing proselytizing of non-Muslims by Muslims; and the difficulty in obtaining permission to build churches, as compared to government funding of mosque construction.
In fact, the confiscation of Christian church lands and resources, attacks on churches and church properties, harassment of clergy and parishioners, and the intimidation of Christian religious authority generally saw a marked increase following the independence of South Sudan in July 2011—this despite the long and distinguished tradition of a Christian presence in Sudan. USCIRF found that:
A number of churches were attacked in this reporting period. On January 15, extremists burned down the Presbyterian Church of the Sudan; another group burned down a church in Omdurman on June 28. A mob attacked the congregation of the Sudanese Church of Christ on Omdurman West on August 5 as congregants attempted to build a church. The mob threw stones at the members of the congregation and said that they did not want Christians in their neighborhood. In October, a religious statue in a Catholic church in Kosti, White Nile state, was defaced. In a meeting with USCIRF in October, Anglican Bishop Ezekiel Kondo said that numerous churches were razed this year. The government has not responded to any of these attacks. There were threats to additional Christian houses of worship. On September 11, officials from the Ministry of Physical Planning and Public Utilities threatened to demolish the Sudanese Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church of Sudan, and the Roman Catholic Church in Omdurman if the churches continued to conduct services. The officials, who marked the church doors with a red X, said that the churches were operating on government land without permission. In addition to these threats, church leaders report that Ministry of Guidance and Religious Endowment officials have asked them to reveal information about church activities and church members. At the end of the reporting period, no action had been taken against the churches.
USCIRF also reports that,
…religiously-based attacks on the Christian community reportedly amounting to ethnic cleansing occurred in the fighting in Southern Kordofan; more than 150 persons were arrested for apostasy and many forced to renounce their faith; Christian leaders and houses of worship were attacked and threatened; and a new constitution is predicted to remove religious freedom and human rights protections included in the Interim National Constitution.
In 2011, nearly 170 persons were imprisoned and charged with apostasy, a crime punishable by death in Sudan. In the past, suspected converts were subjected to intense scrutiny, intimidation, and sometimes torture by government security personnel. On May 8, Sudanese intelligence officers arrested Hawa Abdulla Muhammad Saleh, a Christian, for apostasy, proselytizing, “Christianization of minors,” and other crimes. Upon her arrest, the government posted a picture of Hawa holding a Bible in her hand, putting her life in danger. She was later released and remains in the country. On July 29, 150 people were arrested and 129 were charged with apostasy, disturbance of the public peace, and being a public nuisance. The individuals are members of the Darfur Hausa ethnic group and practice a version of Islam different than the one propagated by the ruling NCP; they follow the Qur’an but not the sunna. The individuals were released in September only after they renounced their faith and agreed to follow the government’s interpretation of Islam.
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Below is a brief compendium of further excerpts bearing on Sudan’s version of sharia and hudud, drawn from human rights reporting, news dispatches, and videos (one video carries an appropriate viewer warning). There is also an Appendix discussing the question of torture and sharia.
 
• Flogging protest—spirited and courageous women in Khartoum protest the barbarism of flogging even while imprisoned:
http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=/watch%3Fv%3DufT2lCUuckk
• An infamous video of a woman being mercilessly flogged in Khartoum (caution—brutal viewing): http://vimeo.com/18778956
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