It was a short-lived feeling of triumph, this Sudan Revolts. For
roughly a month or a month and a half, anger and fury over decades of injustice
blanketed the streets not only of Khartoum, but numerous states in Sudan as
well.
But it all ended before it even began, yielding hundreds of tales of mass arrests, abductions and expatriation. And I do not wish to dwell on the causes of this sudden cessation; because it is a never-ending discussion that entails philosophical justifications that bore me half to death. I have had this conversation one too many times with one too many people, and though the responses from one person to the other may vary, the fact remains the same: there is always an excuse.
Yes, the people's protests against the Sudanese regime initially promised something so auspicious, yet terminated so prematurely. But I only care to know why the deafening silence of apathy and indifference has gone and infected the rest of the population?
I am eager to know why, after news broke out that the notorious
Sudanese National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) has murdered yet
more Darfurian students this month, no one as much as blinked or moved a
muscle. Apart from a few murmured condemnations here and there.
It is popular belief that there is not much the Sudanese civil society is able do. In March, a woman who hails from the Nuba Mountains, Awadiya Ajabna, was shot dead in front of her house by the holier-than-thou Public Order Police. Today, her killer roams free and her family is silenced. Another Nuba Mountains activist, named Jalila Khamis, was kidnapped from her home in the same month. To this day she remains in detention.
I can write a book about the human rights violations committed by
the Sudanese government that I know of over the past year alone. True, we the
people are outraged, but why do we not manifest our rage in a form that could
bring about tangible results? I am perplexed and appalled by our silence.
The National Congress Party (NCP) came to power in 1989, and since then it has brainwashed and desensitized the masses to the point of no return. They now think of things like war, torture and death as mediocrities; like they are just a given. The NCP has done an excellent job in dividing the people to the extent that injustice and abuse no longer brings them together.
My words may seem cynical, yet I am a hopeful. I will always keep romanticizing ‘Sudan Revolts’ because I believe in it and I believe in our people, and I will wait for its backlash to come to fruition for as long as I have to... even if it takes the generation of my future grandchildren to make it happen.
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