Dozens protest against Sudan reforms

KHARTOUM/AMMAN: Dozens of Sudanese protested in the capital Khartoum on Friday against recent government reforms they consider anti-Islamic, including allowing non-Muslims to drink alcohol, an AFP correspondent said.
Justice Minister Nasredeen Abdulbari said last Saturday that Muslim-majority Sudan now “allows non-Muslims to consume alcohol on the condition it doesn’t disturb the peace and they don’t do so in public.” He also said that converting from Islam to another religion would be decriminalized.
The announcements came a day after the country criminalized female genital mutilation.
Protesters took to the streets of Khartoum after prayers on Friday in the east and north of the capital, an AFP correspondent said.
They shouted slogans including, “God’s laws shall not be replaced” and carried banners reading “No to secularism.”
“Hamdok, Khartoum is not New York,” other protesters cried, addressing Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who leads Sudan’s transitional government.
Late last month, Hamdok had pledged to announce decisions that “may have a major impact” in the country.
Security forces blocked streets in central Khartoum and bridges connecting the capital with its twin city of Omdurman, the AFP correspondent said.
Unprecedented popular protests that kicked off in Sudan in December 2018 led to the ousting of President Omar Bashir in April last year after 30 years in power and set the course for civilian rule. Extremists largely stayed on the sidelines of the nationwide demonstrations.
Under Bashir’s 30-year rule, the country adopted a more radical course of Islam, hosting Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden between 1992 and 1996.
It also imposed punishments including flogging and sent jihadist volunteers to fight in the country’s civil war with the south Sudanese.
The US blacklisted Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism, in a move that decimated the country’s economy.
Sudan’s transitional government, installed under a deal between protest leaders and the generals who took charge after Bashir’s ouster, has been pursuing a string of reforms, seeking to rebuild ties with the US, boost its international standing and rescue its ailing economy. A day earlier, activists hailed Sudan’s decision to lift the death penalty and flogging as punishment for gay sex. Others criticized the relaxation of the law in conservative Sudan, where a transitional government has promised to lead the country to democracy.
“These amendments are still not enough but they’re a great first step for the transitional government that’s trying to implement changes,” Noor Sultan, founder of Bedayaa, an LGBT+ group in Egypt and Sudan, said on Thursday. “We see this as a positive change on the path to reform.”
Sudan also decided to ban female genital mutilation, which typically involves the partial or total removal of the external genitalia of girls and women, and allow women to travel with their children without a permit from a male relative, he said.
Sultan said the government was discreet about dropping the death penalty for gay sex and its amendment document did not detail what Article 148 — the sodomy law — was about.
“I think society is still reluctant to accept such changes but I hope that the government will continue in its path toward reform,” she said.
Others criticized the Justice Ministry’s reform agenda.