More than 100 women gathered outside a Khartoum courthouse yesterday to protest against the trial of a Sudanese woman journalist who faces 40 lashes for wearing “indecent” pants.
Demonstrators waved banners denouncing the public order police who arrested journalist Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein and 12 other women for wearing trousers at a Khartoum restaurant last month.
‘NOT AFRAID’
Hussein’s trial was expected to start at 11am.
“Against flogging,” some banners read, with others denouncing a law that decrees up to 40 lashes for anyone “who commits an indecent act which violates public morality or wears indecent clothing.”
Ten women have already been whipped for the same offence — Muslims and Christians alike — and Hussein, who works for the UN media office in Sudan, has said she will fight a guilty verdict and the law itself.
“I’m ready for anything to happen. I’m absolutely not afraid of the verdict,” she said in an interview on Monday.
UN IMMUNITY WAIVED
Hussein, in her 30s, could have claimed immunity as a UN worker, but waived it at a hearing in a packed Khartoum courtroom last week, saying she wanted to change the country’s laws.
“If I am sentenced to be whipped or to anything else I will appeal. I will see it through to the end, to the constitutional court if necessary,” she said.
“And if the constitutional court says the law is constitutional, I’m ready to be whipped not 40 but 40,000 times,” she said.
Hussein said she wants to get rid of Article 152, which “is both against the Constitution and Shariah [Muslim law].”
Nothing in the Koran says that women should be flogged over what they wear, she said.
‘JUSTIFY’
“If some people refer to the Shariah to justify flagellating women because of what they wear, then let them show me which Koranic verses or hadith [sayings of the Prophet Mohammed] say so. I haven’t found them,” she said.
At the last hearing, Hussein, who also works for the left-wing al-Sahafa newspaper, appeared in court in the same moss-green slacks she wore when she was arrested.
Police have also cracked down on another woman journalist, Amal Habbani, who published an article in the Ajrass al-Horreya newspaper entitled: “Lubna: A case of subduing a woman’s body.”
Unlike many other Arab countries, particularly in the Gulf, women have a prominent place in Sudanese public life. Nevertheless, human rights organizations say some of the country’s laws discriminate against women.
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