“If I could walk, I would go to the streets again”, Muna*, a 25-year-old Sudanese protester, told me over the phone recently. She was shot and severely injured by the army during an early June crackdown against a sit-in in the capital Khartoum, when activists say more than 100 people were murdered in one day and dozens of bodies were pulled from the Nile.
Despite the bullet that remains lodged in her leg, Muna has continued her activism for women’s rights and democracy in Sudan, calling others to join the ‘millions march’ later that month, on 30 June. She didn’t even let a month-long, total internet blackout get in her way, sending text messages and going door-to-door, by wheelchair, to spread information to keep the revolution alive.
As a Sudanese women’s rights activist, living in exile in Egypt, I’ve watched this revolution unfold with a mixture of astonishment and fear. Every day, I speak with women like Muna on the frontlines. They have been the heart, the mind and the driving force of the revolution which kicked off in December 2018. In April, they ousted one of the world’s worst dictators, Omar Al-Bashir.
