This is a bleak picture of journalists living with war in Sudan. In May 2023 alone, two senior Sudanese journalists lost their lives because of war-related complications. Dozens have been arrested or have stayed hidden in isolated buildings for days and days, scores have been subjected to all types of harassment and hundreds have been forced to leave their homes and migrate. Those who lost their jobs, since the start of the war, are countless.
HOW THE WAR STARTED
APRIL 15, 2023 On the morning of April, the 15th, Khartoum inhabitants were awoken frightened by machine gunfire and mortar shelling. A war broke between the Sudanese People’s Armed Forces (SAF), the national army, and its once offshoot, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The RSF is a paramilitary force created in 2013 to help the government fight rebels in Darfur and other regions of the country. But it developed into a military might to be reckoned with. The two disagreed following a popular revolution that toppled 30 years of military rule under ousted President Omar Bashir, 1989-2019.
REVOLUTION The revolution ushered in procedures to civilian government. Under those procedures the various former rebel movements and the RSF are sought to be part of one, professional and unified National Army. The RSF and army disagreement was on how quick the merger of the forces takes place. The army wanted two years, the RSF wanted ten years. Each accused the other of planning to sidekick the other. Their disagreement reached its peak on April the 15th. War broke.
KHARTOUM The epicenter of the war has been the national capital Khartoum, the most densely populated town in the country with over 10 million people. It has been a war that observed no limits, no principles and spared no body, journalists were not exception.
Abdou Dieng, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan stressed on 24 May 2023 that the escalating violence over the past five weeks in Sudan has had a catastrophic impact on civilians, leading to a dire humanitarian situation.
A JOURNALIST’S APPEAL BEFORE HIS DEATH IN KHARTOUM
The tragic death of Abdul- Kareem Gassim, Sudanese sports journalist-specialized in football and member of the AIGS, illustrates this grim humanitarian situation.
This was the last message 60-year-old Gassim posted on his Facebook account before he died of blood poisoning brought by lack of proper regular dialysis, as health centers and facilities were attacked and occupied by RSF, speaks for itself.
LAST MESSAGE “I appeal to Daglo Family and all the Rapid Support Forces leadership, please vacate Amal Hospital, please allow patients have dialysis and allow medical cadre to come in please,” Gassim, wrote three weeks before his tragic death on Monday 22nd, 2023, in Khartoum.
According to bereaved family friends, Gassim worked with Awa’ael, Anbaa, Sudani Hadeeh, Engaz, outstanding Sudanese newspapers, including the prominent Goon sports paper. He left behind a family of three girls and his wife, Amirah Sabri.
NO HOSPITAL The appeal was made on April the 29th after troops took over the Amal Hospital in Kober area in Khartoum State. Gassim passed away of kidney complications, no hospital could receive him to offer an emergency dialysis.
Gassim was not alone. There are currently 12000 kidney plant patients who receive regular dialysis in the country but stand on their toes as supplies run short. Gassim said he was launching the appeal “on my behalf and on behalf of kidney failure patients” who are receiving medical service at Amal Hospital in kober. It was addressed to “Daglo family” and to all Rapid Support Forces leaders.
DAGLO FAMILY Mohamed Hamdan Daglo is the RSF Commander. The RSF senior leading command positions are mostly within the grip of the Daglo family. The second man in the force was Abdul Rahim Daglo, brother of Mohamed Hamdan Daglo. It is a family paramilitary force
“Please lift your siege of the Amal Hospital. Allow medical staff to come in and take care of patients with kidney complications, allow them receive medical attention.” He wrote on April 29th.
Gassim, lived in Hajj Yousef neighborhood, a Khartoum suburb. Amal hospital, some 20 kms to the south west of Hajj Yousef, is the nearest hospital with adequate facilities to provide such services.
“We as patients are tired of going around looking for dialysis centers that we cannot find and, if found, we only received a session of two hours, which will not help a lot for the dialysis patient. Please have mercy and save those patients and stop the suffering they are undergoing.” Gassim added in his note which has now became famous after he passed away.
ESCAPING LACK OF HEALTH SERVICE IN KHARTOUM TO MEET DEATH IN MEDANI: STORY OF RENOWNED FEMALE JOURNALIST
But the hospital remains closed, despite a truce agreement sponsored by the US and Saudi Arabia, stipulating a pullout from all hospitals.
When the war broke, and dozens of hospitals were occupied or closed because of military operations and harassment of medical cadre, people with resources had to move to Medani and kosti, 75 to 120 kms south of Khartoum. Some even went as far as Kasala on the borders with Ethiopia for such a medical service.
NIMAT BILAL It was to Medani that the family of Ms. Nimat Bilal, veteran journalist, rushed to, hoping to secure her proper medical care. Bilal was the first woman ever to head the country’s national news agency (SUNA) in the early 1990s. She could not find proper medical care in Khartoum. Bilal family moved her out of the town, 75 km south of Khartoum to receive medical attention.
However, when she arrived it was too late, they had to amputate her leg from the utmost upper joint, the hips. And she subsequently died of sugar complications in Medani. She was not the only one to experience this ordeal.
PARAMILITARY FORCES The Sudanese Ministry for Health has recently accused the paramilitary forces of occupying 28 hospitals in Khartoum, 6 vital health facilities and forcefully taking away 21 ambulances.
This was something journalists lived and saw in front of their eye, on a daily basis. They experienced it in the tragic death of a leading sportsman in the Sudan, sending a reverberating warning about what to be expected.
FOOTBALLER’S DAUGHTER’S DEATH BREAKS HIS HEART INSTANTLY
Fawzzi el Mardhi, was a renowned dexterous defender with First League team Al Hilal. Upon retiring from active football, he engaged in administration and training. Still with the same club, Al Hilal. Hilal was the love of his life, along with Alaa, his daughter, a physician.
FATHER AND DAUGHTER His beloved daughter, Doctor Alaa, had just returned from her hospital when an eerie bullet from a sniper went through her chest inside their home during the first week of the war. She died instantly. He could not bear her loss. He succumbed and died in pain of her loss.
IMPACT OF WAR The direct death toll has been rising, ranging from 750 to over 800. These are the ones reported, who died as a direct result of shooting as well as war-induced victims. Over 5,000 men, women and children have been injured since 15 April. Around 1.3 million people have been displaced inside and outside the country, and millions more are confined to their homes, unable to access vital services while civilian infrastructure and markets face damage and destruction.
The UN says that as a result of the continued violence an estimated 24.7 million people, or half of the population of Sudan, require urgent humanitarian assistance and protection, a sharp 57 per cent increase from the number in need at the beginning of 2023.
ORDEAL TO STORIES But even during time of hardships, journalists tend to convert their ordeal into stories and parables that inform people and improve their lots in dire situation.
JOURNALIST USES HIS ORDEAL TO APPEAL FOR THE BURIAL OF DEAD BODIES LITTERING THE STREETS OF KHARTOUM
When his brother died on Thursday 25 May 2023, Osman Mirghani, he used the tragedy to send a message to the entire world, to the UN and warring parties.
Mirghani, is one of the top leading publishers and editors in the Sudan that have been calling on the Sudanese people to wash out against a calamity that would befall if they let slip away chances of reconciliation.
THE APPEAL “My elder brother, Mohamed Mirghani, has just died. But my brother’s (death) is much better than hundred others whose bodies are still, a month well after they died, could not find somebody to bury them, or rather, the remaining carcass of those bodies,” he wrote after returning from the burial on Thursday.
“His death has just added another figure to the thousands who died in silence, because of failure to have access to proper health care. They are not added up to the figures recorded by the international organizations. Those dead just slip down between the pages of these organizations, those who have been denied access to hospitals.
“My brother is better than hundreds who died and over a month after their death, they could not find somebody to cover their remains, or rather the remaining bones of their corpse.
“My brother was lucky. He at least found some people who can perform a prayer before his body and say farewell to him to the hereafter. May Allah accept him within the group of His Messengers, Martyrs and goodhearted people.”
UNKNOWN NUMBER OF BODIES Hundreds of people who died, some inside their cars, others inside their homes, or in the streets or under ruins of a building, or caught in the cross fire, were still in the open, a truce that is enacted has failed to hold back the fighting and the charity including the Red Cross and Red crescent could not enter those areas to bury the remains of unknown number of bodies in Khartoum.
MATERIAL LOSSES IN BILLIONS
The material losses are put at “billions of dollars” according to Harith Idris Harith, Sudan’s representative with the United Nations. He told the UN Security Council, mid-May 2023, that because of the war and the looting and destruction that accompanied the fighting, over 150,000 people are now jobless.
The Sudanese journalist syndicates said hundreds of journalists have lost their jobs and their homes.
LOSING JOBS AND HOMES Mufti Mohamed Saeed, co-writer of this item, representative of the Sudanese media in all the AIPS activities, was subjected to an ordeal of ripping apart his home by armed groups, in Khartoum East.
Eyewitness commented that it was only “divine protection” that saved him and his family. The veteran journalist was also unable to attend the Seoul Congress as the Korean embassy was closed down, like all other embassies in Khartoum as a result of the war. He has to relocate the whole family to northern Sudan Dongla town at whooping cost and efforts.
BREAKING INTO HOMES Breaking into homes and ripping and looting properties has become the order of the day, almost all media people and media houses, to the exception of a few foreign media, have to leave their locations and residence.
Ali Mohamed Shummu, former Minister, former head of the national TV and radio and currently professor of media, in the Sudan, was sitting on a huge archive of audio visual wealth at his home in Omdurman. The recordings and wealth of invaluable prices, were in a few minutes torn apart and his house looted, the janitor beaten up and the house rendered into a barracks.
STAYING ALIVE The Sudanese journalists syndicate has listed dozens of journalists who were arrested, harassed, having their mobiles and money confiscated, and manhandled. At the beginning of the war the Sudanese Red Cross and the Red Crescent had to intervene following appeals to get journalists, and media men out of three buildings inside the national capital Khartoum. Some of those journalists spent three days under heavy bombardment in the base of building overlooking the Nile.
“This war has actually cancelled any sport journalism. Sports journalists in Sudan are nowadays jobless. They have to work on how to stay alive. People have to forget about their first love: football. Football is loved because, unlike this war of the generals, you clash on the pitch but still you come out friends even if your team is defeated,” he lamented.
