Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary-general, said that he is worried about the repression in Sudan and called on the Khartoum government to investigate the deaths during protests across the country.
Women's human rights defenders have been involved in leading the protest movements that called for the improvement of the living conditions in Sudan. Their important and vital role was a direct cause of their violent targeting by the Sudanese authorities. In fact, about 60 human rights defenders were arrested in one month, and despite the release of some of them, still more than 16 human rights defenders are in prison, including the leaders of the initiative "not to oppress women" Dr. Ihsan Fakiri, the Sudanese Women's Union, Adila Al-Zibaq, Dr. Amal Jabrallah and the lawyers Hanan Nour, Hinadi Fadhl, Samia Zarqawi and Amani Othman, as well as, journalists such as Aziza Awadh, and the human rights defenders Soumaya Ishak, Intisar and Amani Idris who chose to risk their lives and participate peacefully in the movements and protests in their regions.
The Sudanese authorities arrested the doctor and defender, Hiba Omar Ibrahim, on January 13. She has been under the pressure of the police to disclose the names of a number of defenders in the medical field, especially members of the professional community, putting them in a critical and dangerous situation.
In fact, the defender Zainab Badruddin Mohammed was threatened by telephone from a member of the security services.
The Sudanese authorities are trying to hinder the work of women human rights defenders in various ways. It seems that the current main objective of the regime is to prevent them from being present in the movements and protest areas, because of their high influence.
The regional coalition of women human rights defenders in the Middle East and North Africa believes that the situation is very tense in Sudan. The Sudanese authorities are already violently hostile to women defenders and their presence in the public space.
The Regional Coalition denounced the brutality of the Sudanese authorities and their non-commitment to the human rights and their continued attacks on women defenders, calling on them to stop the violence. Moreover it called for the immediate and unconditional release of all human rights defenders, who had been arbitrarily detained, since no charges had been proven against them so far.
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