The Prime Minister of Sudan, Abdalla Hamdok , on Twitter, paid tribute to women who had “endured the atrocities that resulted from the implementation of this law”. Former President Omar al-Bashir’s party was also disbanded by the transitional authorities of the country.
Mr Bashir took power in a coup d’état in 1989 and ruled for
almost 30 years before he was toppled in April through peaceful protests. A
joint military and civil council, as well as a civilian-led cabinet headed by
Prime Minister Hamdok are presently leading Sudan.
Both the abolition of the law of
public order and the dissolution of the National Congress Party (NCP) were the
aftermath of the protest movement’s core demands geared at dismantling the
regime of Mr Bashir. At the news of the movements, people celebrated
overnight on the streets of the capital Khartoum.
One of two women on Sudan’s new
Sovereign Council, Aisha Musa, told BBC Newsday that while the former regime
had concentrated on how women dressed and acted — including banning women from
wearing trousers — their education and health care had been neglected. “It is about time that all this corruption stops, that
all this treatment for the women of Sudan stops,” she said.
A 2017 report by two charities
described the restrictions as a combination of legal and moral prohibitions,
“designed to exclude and intimidate women from actively participating in
public life”.
They granted dictatorial powers to the
authorities to arbitrarily regulate what women wore, to whom they spoke and
met, and the jobs they held-with any suspected perpetrator
facing penalty by flogging, or stoning and even execution in rare instances. However, the
public order rules were kept “vague and open-ended leaving them open to
exploitation as a social control tool by the authorities,” the report
stated.
Human rights activist Hala al-Karib
told BBC Newsday that abolishing the law was a “massive step” for her
country, adding that the law had upheld the ideology of the old regime that was
“based in terror and discrimination”.
Officials had the power to “literally hunt women,” she said,
and these laws had unequally affected poorer women, women from conflict
zones, and people outside Khartoum.
But while embracing the abolishment of
the law, Ms. Karib said it was important to do more to change “a very
discriminatory legal framework.”
Females were at the frontline of the
campaign that ousted Mr Bashir’s . Women were visible at the forefront
throughout the protests, advocating for greater liberty both for
themselves and for their country.
“We need a fair and just country. We have suffered a
lot. More than men in many cases. Women should be at the centre of any
government,” said an activist to
Al Jazeera news agency in April.
22-year-old student Alaa Salah became a symbol for
activists, gaining her the nickname “Nubian Queen”, after a
video of her leading chants against the former leader went viral. Sudan
organized its first march in decades for the International Day
for Eliminating Violence Against Women on 25 November.
AN UNJUST ORDER
The decision to abolish the rule of the public order is a
major step forward. It was used specifically by the government to
subjugate women. Some were given 40 lashes in public for wearing trousers. The
application of the law demonstrated the inequalities and conflicts within the
Sudanese community. It was almost usual in recent years to see wealthy Khartoum
women wearing trousers in public, while those who were victimized by
the morality police were often poorer women from the marginalized areas on the
outskirts of the large country.
Meanwhile, the NCP was
just a political platform for a dictatorship that sought to restructure
every aspect of Sudanese life and clamped down on anyone who objected
incredibly hard. Hopefully, the authorities would help to stop the old
regime from crippling the transitional government after dissolving the NCP. As
much as it seems contradictory that the transitional government
established to move the country to democracy has banned a
political party, but the NCP, accused of causing so much suffering, will not be
grieved by anyone other than its members.
The protesters and the women’s
rights activists, in particular, applaud the downfall of the NCP and
the law, even though they acknowledge that this is just the commencement of a longer
struggle towards the transformation of Sudan.
THE NCP
To disband the National Congress Party
(NCP) means that the authorities can claim the property of the party. The
declaration stated that this would be achieved by setting up a committee. This, Mr
Hamdok tweeted was in order to “retrieve the stolen wealth of the people
of Sudan.” The decree also states that “None of the regime or party’s
symbols would be allowed to engage in any 10-year political activity.”
Samahir Mubarak, a spokeswoman for the Sudanese
Professionals Association, the protest group that ousted Mr Bashir, told the
BBC that this was “a historic moment”.
“This is a moment of relief, because each and
every person in Sudan has been affected in some way or the other by this regime
in a negative manner,” she said.
The NCP, however condemned the move as “nothing
more than a moral scandal, an act of intellectual bankruptcy and a total
failure on the part of the illegal government”.
“The party is not bothered by any law or
decision issued against it as the NCP is a strong party and its ideas will
prevail,” a post on the party’s Facebook page states.
HAPPENINGS IN SUDAN
Sudan’s unrest began as far back as
December 2018, when emergency austerity measures were imposed by the Bashir
government. Cuts in subsidies of bread and fuel triggered protests over
the standard of living in the East and, the outrage extended to
the city. The protests led to demands for Mr Bashir to be removed, though
he had been in power for 30 years.
After sit-ins outside the defense
ministry, the president was toppled by the military in April, but protesters
still wanted to ensure that power was immediately transferred to a civilian
government. A transitional government that came to power in August, has pledged
to reunite the Sudan.
