KASSALA, Sudan
Detainees in Kassala state
prison are threatening to engage in an open hunger strike to protest their
prolonged and arbitrary detention.
Hausa people protest outside local government offices
in Port Sudan demanding justice for Hausa killed in Blue Nile region on July
19, 2022 AFP photo |
Kassala state authorities have
taken in custody a number of activists and legal figures from Hausa tribe
against the backdrop of demonstrations in the city to protest the killing of
Hausa in the Blue Nile region last July.
The protesters burned some
buildings of the state government secretariat and other institutions. Also,
three individuals were killed in response to the inter-communal disputes
between Hausa and Berta tribes in the Blue Nile region.
Families of the detainees
marched to the state’s prosecution office where they handed over a memorandum
calling for the release or trial of the detainees.
“The detainees will start a
hunger strike because of their arbitrary detention,” Osman Babu, a relative of
a detainee, told Sudan Tribune.
Babu added that the protesters
requested the prosecution to release them within the next 48 hours. He further
warned they would hold protests and sit-ins outside the prosecution’s office
and the government secretariat.
Dozens of people were killed
and over 30,000 displaced as a result of fighting between Hausa and Berta in
the Blue Nile region. The local authorities imposed a curfew and deployed
security forces to reduce the bloody violence.
A number of states witnessed
protests organized by Hausa people, but the security services used excessive
force to disperse them, killing several people in Kassala and Gedaref in
eastern Sudan.
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