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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Sudan women's activist wins human rights prize

(FILES) In this file photo take on September 8, 2013, shows Sudanese Amira Osman Hamed speaking with an AFP journalist during an interview in Khartoum. Sudanese women's activist Amira Osman Hamed has won a Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk, the organisation announced on May 27, 2022. The activist and engineer, now in her forties, has been advocating for Sudanese women for two decades, and was detained this year in a crackdown following the country's latest coup. (Photo by Ashraf SHAZLY / AFP)
(FILES) In this file photo take on September 8, 2013, shows Sudanese Amira Osman Hamed speaking with an AFP journalist during an interview in Khartoum. Sudanese women's activist Amira Osman Hamed has won a Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk, the organisation announced on May 27, 2022. The activist and engineer, now in her forties, has been advocating for Sudanese women for two decades, and was detained this year in a crackdown following the country's latest coup. (Photo by Ashraf SHAZLY / AFP)
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KHARTOUM: Sudanese women's activist Amira Osman Hamed has won a Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk, the organisation announced on Friday.


The activist and engineer, now in her forties, has been advocating for Sudanese women for two decades, and was detained this year in a crackdown following the country's latest coup.


She was among defenders from Afghanistan, Belarus, Zimbabwe and Mexico who also received the 2022 award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk.


Osman "never deterred from her mission," Dublin-based Front Line Defenders said in its awards announcement, "consistently (advocating) for democracy, human rights, and women's rights."


After first being charged for wearing trousers in 2002, she drew international support in 2013 when she was detained and threatened with flogging for refusing to wear a headscarf.


Both charges fell under morality laws during the rule of longtime autocrat Omar al Bashir who took power in a coup. Osman said at the time that the morality laws had "changed Sudanese women from victims to criminals" and targeted "the dignity of Sudanese people."


In 2009, she established "No to Women Oppression", an initiative to advocate against the much-derided Public Order Law. It was finally repealed in 2019 after Bashir's ouster following a mass uprising.


Women were at the forefront of protests that toppled Bashir, and hopes were high for a more liberal Sudan as restrictions were removed that had stifled their actions and public lives.


But many fear for the hard-won liberties gained since his ouster, after the October coup led by army chief General Abdel Fattah al Burhan derailed a fragile transition to civilian rule.


A crackdown on civilian pro-democracy figures has followed, with at least 96 people killed in protests and hundreds detained. - AFP


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