Mereja Forum

[Mesob]

(Consequences of Arabization Sudan)
Viewpoint from Sudan - where black people are called slaves

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53147864

Published 25 July 2020

In our series of Letters from African journalists, Zeinab Mohammed Salih writes about the horrific racial abuse black people experience in Sudan.
Warning: This article contains offensive language
As anti-racism protests swept through various parts of the world following African-American George Floyd's death in police custody in the US, Sudan seemed to be in a completely different world.
There was little take-up in Sudan of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. Instead many Sudanese social media users hurled racial abuse at a famous black Sudanese footballer, Issam Abdulraheem, and a light-skinned Arab make-up artist, Reem Khougli, following their marriage.
"Seriously girl, this is haram [Arabic for forbidden]... a queen marries her slave," one man commented on Facebook after seeing a photo of the couple.
Facebook Live from honeymoon
There were dozens of similar comments - not surprising in a country where many Sudanese who see themselves as Arabs, rather than Africans, routinely use the word "slave", and other derogatory words, to describe black people.
Sudan has always been dominated by a light-skinned, Arabic-speaking elite, while black Africans in the south and west of the country have faced discrimination and marginalisation.
It is common for newspapers to publish racial slurs, including the word "slave".
Engraving depicting Abyssinian slaves being taken from the Sudan across the desert to the Red Sea to be taken to Jeddahimage copyrightUniversal History Archive
image captionSudan was a major slave-trading area in the 19th Century
A few weeks ago, an Islamist columnist at Al-Intibaha, a daily newspaper supportive of ex-President Omar al-Bashir, who does not approve of women playing football, referred to the female football coach of the Gunners, a well-known youth team for girls, as a slave.
And almost all media outlets describe petty criminals in the capital, Khartoum, as "negros" as they are perceived to be poor and not ethnically Arab.
When I asked Abdulraheem for his reaction to the racial abuse hurled at him and his wife, he said: "I couldn't post more pictures on my social media pages for fear of receiving more [abuse]."
Instead, the 29-year-old and his 24-year-old wife did a Facebook live during their honeymoon, saying they were in love and their race was irrelevant.
Few black faces
In another recent instance, the head of a women's rights group, No To Women Oppression, commented on a photo showing a young black man with his white European wife by saying that the woman, in choosing her husband, may have been looking for the creature missing on the evolutionary ladder between humans and monkeys.
Following an outcry, Ihsan Fagiri announced her resignation, but No To Women Oppression refused to accept it, saying she did not mean it.
A Sudanese protester holds up a sign reading in Arabic "our martyrs are not dead, they are alive with the revolutionaries" along with the English slogans "#BLUEforSUDAN" and "#BLACKLIVESMATTER", as demonstrators mark the first anniversary of a raid on an anti-government sit-in and some demonstrate in support of US protesters over the death of George Floyd, in the Riyadh district in the east of the capital Khartoum on June 3, 2020

Few black faces
In another recent instance, the head of a women's rights group, No To Women Oppression, commented on a photo showing a young black man with his white European wife by saying that the woman, in choosing her husband, may have been looking for the creature missing on the evolutionary ladder between humans and monkeys.
Following an outcry, Ihsan Fagiri announced her resignation, but No To Women Oppression refused to accept it, saying she did not mean it.