Sudan: Sleeping, intending and other illegal activities

Speaking to a reporter after his release from a few hours detention, Muzafar (not his real name) said that they were woken up by batons, whipped unto their feet and out of the university dorms. He said they were told to pack their clothes and take them with them. "Please make sure you take all your belongings with you" said the officer in the air hostess uniform.

The boys' dormitories at the University of Khartoum was raided at 4 am on Friday. More than 300 students were apparently beaten and arrested, and taken to several police stations around the capital Khartoum.... for sleeping!

The university has witnessed a surge in student protests since late December, in which students were demanding a stop to police violence and the right to form a student's union. The authorities then decided to close down the university until early March.

In Friday's raid, the students were charged with "disturbing the peace", "G-Unit" and several other record company names. They were charged for their "intention" of staging a peaceful sit-in on Sunday.

Let's assume the government of Sudan has a legal system; let's also assume they - like everyone else - are humans, have human brains, feet and eyeballs. Is it possible, that a bunch of humans huddled up in a room, thinking with their feet, suggest a raid on sleeping students, agree on it, and eventually carry it out? Apparently so.. you know why? Because sleeping is illegal in Sudan; specially sleeping at night, in dorms, at an educational institution, in a bed, while breathing, oxygen, but not any oxygen, NCP oxygen. That's right. Non-NCP members aren't allowed to breathe NCP oxygen.

It all seems unfair to be honest; because honestly, we don't have a proper oppressive regime. Our dictatorship is chaotic, it has sporadic surges of political testosterone. When this happens - even at 4 am - they get this inexorable urge to beat something. Apparently, when they really can't find a justifiable target, they take it out on cattle.

In a proper dictatorship, the beating would've taken place during the sit-in on Sunday. This seems relatively fair. Yes, ethical crime is a contradiction, but it seems to be the code of the "bad guys"; ask Hussni Mubarak and Dr Evil. Not only is our government violent against its own citizens, it's recklessly violent.

Most of the students were eventually taken back to their dorms, but most were left money-less; and apparently some are still detained. The students said they were looted by the officers during the raid, which is not surprising given the nature of the raid. It is precisely this type of thuggery that has caused so many to criticize the current regime. But, criticism or not, Friday's raid was absolutely abhorrent.

This is yet another sign that the government is becoming extremely uncomfortable and apprehensive. The government is so uncomfortable that, not only is it making whimsical decisions, but well thought out irrelevant ones too.

Now, apparently, no high ranking government official is allowed to leave the country without Bashir's approval. His personal approval. So, you have to call him - on his cell phone - and ask for permission to leave the country. This, they say, is part of the government's new plan to cut spending and keep the negligible amount of foreign currency they have left within Sudan's borders. So after you call him, he does the math in his head, calculates how much your trip will cost, deducts that from the $17.29 of foreign currency in the Central Bank, and then decides whether your trip is worth it. After permission is granted, the government official has to bring back a note from the country that he's travelling to confirming his visit, and that he was a good boy. The note has to be signed by the president of set country, the foreign minister and Sudan's ambassador.

It's a f***ing kindergarten!

The Sudanese Identity

“Indeed, many of the conflicts and barbarities in the world are sustained through the illusion of a unique and choiceless identity” - Amartya Sen

I've come to realise that many Sudanese youths are overly - and might I add, falsely - preoccupied with the concept of 'Sudanese Identity'. We always end up enthusiastically arguing this point when discussing Sudan. We seem to be stuck in the middle of a tug-of-war between African and Arab.

These arguments arises from the fact that Arabic is the dominant language, and Islam is the dominant religion in the country, hence creating an Arab identity. Yet dark skin and frankly, an excess of local languages are evidence of African ancestry.

The above arguments are false in many aspects. Islam does not mean Arab, and dark skin and local languages don't necessarily mean African. And then you have the issue with Arab and African identities, which themselves are also not fully defined. So there is a problem with trying to identify with nonexistent identities in the first place.

My contention with this issue of Sudanese Identity is the consistent requisite of having to identify ourselves. Being from Sudan doesn't seem to be enough anymore. This is a very serious issue, because the end goal of all this ‘defining’ is less beneficial than we might think.

Older generations never had this problem. Everyone was Sudanese and content. No one questioned what their Sudaneseness transcended to. Because frankly, it doesn't really matter. Being Arab or African doesn't add or take away anything from who we are.

In Rwanda, Belgian conquerors aggravated the tribal rivalry by giving citizens ID cards that clearly stated which tribe they were from. They then went on to assign each tribe a place in society, giving Tutsis the high societal positions and the Hutus were designated the labour. This is the root cause of the genocide, because primarily, an uneducated Rwandan society failed to see that being Rwandan comes before being Tutsi, or Hutu. Yet, the Rwandan Hutu labourer could’ve identified with the Rwandan Tutsi school teacher just from a common taste in music, let alone a common nationality. So if they had chosen to be Tutsi or Hutu and Rwandan, the story would’ve been different.

It’s obvious that the issue of identity is a global one, not only confined to the borders of Sudan. In his book “Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny”, Amartya Sen says that current identity classifications find their roots in the Western society’s theory of The Clash of Civilizations. He claims that the current identity characterisation is based on civilizations and religions. A concept which he claims is counterproductive to the ubiquitous credence of equality among humans.

He also goes on to say that we all have plural identities, and that if we choose to embrace one and ignore the others, we risk widespread animosity.

The point he’s trying to make is that it is impossible to identify any individual with one thing and one thing only. A person can be a Muslim, a woman, an African, a dentist, a feminist, a vegan, pious and a football fan all at the same time. And she cannot identify with only one category and ignore the others with no significant consequences. Identification with a single group causes divisions, which are perfect for inciting hate towards the ‘other’:

The implicit belief in the overarching power of a singular classification can make the world thoroughly inflammable. A uniquely divisive view goes not only against the old-fashioned belief that all human beings are much the same but also against the less discussed but much more plausible understanding that we are diversely different.

In the aforementioned text, by “diversely different”, Amartya Sen is not referring to a single identity with several sub-identities as we seem to view the Sudanese Identity. It’s in reference to the fact that we are Sudanese, but we’re also a lot of other things.

So since we are all of plural identities, we can find commonalities within our identities, and use them strategically. One cannot identify as only being Sudanese, because this makes an implicit commitment to this category while ignoring all other shared identities.

What we need to do is decide the degree of importance to attach to being Sudanese over other identity categories within which we belong. We cannot create a ‘Sudanese Identity’ that encompasses all existing identities within the country, primarily because we would be to identifying with a single category.

When we finally come to see ourselves as the plethora of identities that we are, the next challenge is how we appear to others. It’s important in the case of Sudan because we have been led to believe that certain people from certain parts of Sudan have certain habits, and this is what we would identify them with.

In Sudan, the Southerners didn’t define themselves as Southern, the Northerners have created this identity for them; and the same has been done for all the people in the outlying regions of Sudan. The north holds this power of ascription for the sole reason that it has always been the more developed, intellectual hub of the country.

The Sudanese Identity cannot house any other identities other than itself. It’s an identity just as being Muslim or Hausa is an identity.

A common misconception is the belief that the lack of a Sudanese identity has stalled any prospects of a revolution in the country. Revolutions don’t happen because of common identification, they happen as a consequence of injustice and corrupt rule. The commonality here is being human. Yes, this sounds ridiculously humanistic, but being human does come before Sudanese; what we fear for ourselves as humans, we fear for others, before that feeling is felt about being Sudanese.

The same concept can be applied to the wars in Sudan. The Sudanese Identity has been defined for us by the rulers of our country since its independence. The problem here is that it was defined, not that it was defined falsely. The fact that this defined Sudanese identity encompassed several identities involuntarily alienated some. The solution for this is not a Sudanese identity that includes every single identity within our borders, because that’s illogical.

We have to choose to be Sudanese, and that’s that. There’s a difference between defining an identity, and choosing one. Defining an identity not only puts limits, but it alienates others, consequentially by the person or people defining it. Plus, no one should have that right to begin with. While choosing one is a personal commitment, and identity is a personal issue.

So instead of defining the Sudanese Identity, we have to choose to be Sudanese, and more importantly, we need to create the conditions in which it becomes obsolete.