East Sudan prisoners threaten to go on hunger strike over arbitrary detention

September 20, 2022 (KASSALA) – Detainees in Kassala state prison are threatening to engage in an open hunger strike to protest their prolonged and arbitrary detention.

Kassala state authorities have taken in custody a number of activists and legal figures from Hausa tribe against the backdrop of demonstrations in the city to protest the killing of Hausa in the Blue Nile region last July.

The protesters burned some buildings of the state government secretariat and other institutions. Also, three individuals were killed in response to the inter-communal disputes between Hausa and Berta tribes in the Blue Nile region.

Families of the detainees marched to the state’s prosecution office where they handed over a memorandum calling for the release or trial of the detainees.

“The detainees will start a hunger strike because of their arbitrary detention,” Osman Babu, a relative of a detainee, told Sudan Tribune.

Babu added that the protesters requested the prosecution to release them within the next 48 hours. He further warned they would hold protests and sit-ins outside the prosecution’s office and the government secretariat.

Dozens of people were killed and over 30,000 displaced as a result of fighting between Hausa and Berta in the Blue Nile region. The local authorities imposed a curfew and deployed security forces to reduce the bloody violence.

A number of states witnessed protests organized by Hausa people, but the security services used excessive force to disperse them, killing several people in Kassala and Gedaref in eastern Sudan.

(ST)