Sudan's Great Writer and its Great Shame
by Aisha Gawad
I heard the cooing of the turtle-dove, and I looked through the window at the palm tree standing in the courtyard of our house and I knew that all was still well with life. I looked at its strong straight trunk, at its roots that strike down into the ground, at the green branches hanging down loosely over its top, and I experienced a feeling of assurance. I felt not like a storm-swept feather but like that palm tree, a being with a background, with roots, with a purpose.
-Tayeb Salih, from "Seasons of Migration to the North"
Tayeb Salih, one of the most respected writers of the Arab world, died last week in London at the age of 80. He was buried in Sudan, his homeland that he wrote about in his seminal work, Seasons of Migration to the North.
Salih died the pride and joy of his nation, but it wasn't always so. In the 1990's, the Sudanese government attacked Seasons, which was published in 1966, declaring it was pornographic and went against Islamic morals. In reality, however, the Sudanese government was most displeased with Salih's critical depiction of the political and social situation in Sudan. Salih spent most of his career living in London, where he was free to write what he wished without incurring government censorship.
The current Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, a beacon of the same sort of government censorship and worse, attended his funeral.
Sudan's atrocious and ongoing human rights violations, particularly in the Darfur region, are well-known. We know about the Janjaweed, the rebel factions, the massacres. But on top of all of this, the government is silencing the voices of Sudan: the writers, journalists and activists who try to speak out against this violence. Recently, the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) has detained and beaten several activists and journalists, and Khartoum is also cracking down on newspapers in an effort to keep word of their abuses from reaching the outside world.
In February 2009, Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a report documenting the government's record of censorship and harassment of journalists and human rights defenders (see http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/02/18/it-s-everyday-battle-0 for more information). The report tells of journalists and activists who criticized the majority National Congress Party and who were first arbitrarily detained, and then cruelly beaten in jail. The NISS has also suspended at least five newspapers due to articles it disapproved of.
Between January and November 2008, HRW found that NISS officials visited newspaper offices and forced the removal of articles or portions of articles. If the newspaper did not comply, the censors would not allow it to go to print. Some newspapers tried leaving blank the spots where the censored articles were supposed to go as a form of protest, but the government soon cracked down on that as well. Editors are now forced to replace offensive articles with ones deemed "acceptable" by the censors.
"The combination of government control, daily censorship of independent media, and abuse and harassment of journalists by the NISS, is a severe barrier to freedom of expression and access to information in Sudan. Any violations of freedom of expression are particularly of concern with national elections scheduled for mid-2009. The elections - Sudan's first in more than 20 years - are required under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the war between North and Southern Sudan in 2005," says HRW.
And to think, this is the Sudan that birthed writers and thinkers as great as Tayeb Salih, the same Sudan that today is killing its own people and forcing them to shut up about it.
