Red like the Tomatoes, Red like the Heart
People shared the story of a schoolgirl in North Darfur allegedly murdered by her father and brother for talking to a man at their tomato farm in 2021. No one was arrested, and she was buried without examination, said Al-Noor Mohamadian, an activist from Kabkabiya, the town where the girl died.
“Her name was Sajida Omer, and she went to a school with my cousins,” Mohamadian said. “When her uncles tried to take the case to a court, they were just convinced to sit down and resolve the issue within the family. It’s understood that her father paid the police to change the story and say that she poisoned herself.”
Ahmed Sibair, a human rights lawyer based in Khartoum, said that crimes against women and girls had increased rapidly since the beginning of the pandemic.
He said Sudan’s legal system was notoriously lenient. “If a father was convicted of killing his children they would be punished with a few years in prison, between three to five years, and get released.
“The police and the judiciary system in Sudan is based on compensations and solving problems, the prosecutors get incentives and they get upgraded for solving the problems, not for judging them.”