Sudanese riot police fired teargas to disperse protesters who gathered outside a Khartoum courthouse yesterday to support a woman journalist who faces up to 40 lashes for wearing trousers.

Lubna Hussein, a widow in her thirties, has drawn attention to her case in an attempt to change a Sudanese law that allows women to be flogged for dressing in breach of the country’s strict indecency laws.

Since her arrest last month she has courted media coverage of her plight and sent out 500 invitations to her trial, which began last week.

In response, about a hundred men and women, some wearing trousers in solidarity with Ms Hussein, began to gather on a main street in Khartoum near the court yesterday. “We are here to protest against this law that oppresses women and debases them,” said Amal Habani, another journalist, who was also arrested last month for writing a column in support of Ms Hussein.

The judge adjourned Ms Hussein’s case until September 7, saying that he needed to seek clarity on whether the defendant was immune from prosecution. He said that the issue would be referred to the Foreign Ministry.

As a trouser-clad Ms Hussein emerged from court after the adjournment, protesters cheered. Some waved banners, one of which read: “No return to the Dark Ages”.

A squad of riot police bore down on them, beating their batons on their shields, and witnesses said that teargas was fired. Manal Awal Khogali, one of Ms Hussein’s lawyers, was reportedly beaten by police.

Among the protesters were representatives of the Sudanese Communist Party and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), which rules the semiautonomous Christian south of the divided country. SPLM officials have complained that some of the 12 women originally arrested with Ms Hussein at a restaurant in Khartoum for wearing trousers were southern women. Ten have been flogged after pleading guilty to infringing Sudan’s public decency laws. Although Islamic law prevails in the north, under a power-sharing deal Christian southerners are supposed to be exempt from Sharia punishments.

Until her trial began last week, Ms Hussein had been employed by the United Nations mission in Sudan as a public information officer.

Under international protocol, UN employees are immune from prosecution but Ms Hussein said that she had quit her job to face trial and raise awareness of her fight against a law that she said was discriminatory and un-Islamic.

“They want to check with the UN whether I have immunity from prosecution,” she said outside the courtroom. “I don’t know why, because I have already resigned from the United Nations. I think they just want to delay the case.” Before the hearing, another of Ms Hussein’s lawyers said that his client would take her case to the Constitutional Court if necessary.

“We are saying the law is so widely drafted that it contravenes her basic right, her right to a fair trial,” said Nabil Adib Abdalla.

Speaking shortly before appearing in court, Ms Hussein said: “Flogging is not pain, flogging is an insult to humans, women and religions. If the court’s decision is that I be flogged, I want this flogging in public.”

With no stipulation in law as to what indecency means, it is often down to individual police officers to make on-the-spot judgments.

The Sudanese Government led by President Omar al-Bashir is sensitive to its public image abroad and has for years smarted at its listing by the United States as a state sponsor of terror.

Now it seems that in referring the case to the Foreign Ministry, the Government is trying to find a face-saving way out of the dilemma.

Taking a stand

— This year a nine-year-old-girl who had been raped by her stepfather secured an abortion in the predominantly Catholic Brazil against the wishes of the Vatican, which threatened to excommunicate her

— Amina Lawal was sentenced to death by stoning in 2002 in northern Nigeria after becoming pregnant by a man who refused to marry her. She fought the sentence and, after an international campaign, it was overturned

— When Amal Soliman applied to be Egypt’s first female marriage registrar last year, male registrars laughed at her. Despite being up against ten men she got the job and was approved by the Justice Ministry

— Nujood Ali, a ten-year-old Yemeni, succeeded in divorcing her husband, more than 20 years her senior, in 2008 after she was forced to carry out sexual acts against her will. Her stepmother and a human rights lawyer helped her to escape; she now wants to be a lawyer

Source: Times database

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