CAIRO: Despite a long-standing crackdown on dissent in Sudan, opponents of President Omar Al-Bashir have found a voice online, using social media to fuel nationwide protests and share images of security forces using violence to suppress them.
The protests in Sudan began peacefully on December 19 to demonstrate against the tripling of the price of bread.
But they have evolved into deadly confrontations between demonstrators and security forces, and triggered calls for the downfall of the country’s veteran ruler.
“Social media is crucial for the movement,” said one 24-year-old activist, speaking with AFP in Cairo over WhatsApp. AFP has withheld his name for safety reasons.
For the past four weeks, activists have actively documented the confrontations and flooded social media with footage which they claim is “exposing” Bashir’s government.
The main cities of the northeast African nation, including the capital Khartoum and its twin city Omdurman, have all been rocked by what is now widely seen as the biggest threat to Bashir in his three decades of iron-fisted rule.
The 24-year-old protester said he only finds out about demonstrations through online announcements and maintained that anger at the “horrible” videos of deadly confrontations was driving more people out onto the streets.
One video purportedly showed a security vehicle chasing protesters to run them over, while gunshots were heard in the background.
Another clip showed people rushing to try to remove the blood-covered body of a protester hit by gunfire. Both have been viewed hundreds of times online.
Authorities say at least 24 people have died in the clashes, but rights groups including Amnesty International have put the death toll at 40 and say more than 1,000 people have been arrested.
On Friday during prayers at a mosque, irate crowds appeared in a video calling on an imam to lead protests against Bashir.
None of the footage could be independently verified by AFP.
Users have also shared multiple images of what appears to be security personnel beating up protesters with batons.
“We are people who don’t accept injustice. And what happened to protesters, whether it was tear gas or live bullets fired at them, is clear injustice,” said another social media activist based in Khartoum, who also spoke to AFP in Cairo and declined to be named fearing reprisals.
“Protests where violations occur are usually followed by larger ones,” the 25-year-old added.
The demonstrations have been spearheaded by the Sudanese Professionals’ Association (SPA) which regularly issues online announcements of upcoming rallies, with the hashtags #Sudan_cities_uprise or #Just_Fall.
Other hashtags such as #SudanRevolts and #SudanUprising have also helped build momentum, amassing hundreds of tweets and retweets by the hour.
Thanks to social media “the uprisings in the regional cities have been noticed a lot more quickly,” said Willow Berridge, a lecturer at Newcastle University in northern England.
And that “has had an impact on what is happening in Khartoum a lot more quickly because of the changing nature of technology and social media.”
With the protests showing no signs of abating, the Sudanese government has sought to curtail the use of social networks, activists and analysts said.
Internet users have reported difficulties accessing platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp since the early days of the protests.
It is not an unusual tactic by autocratic governments.
In the turbulent days of Egypt’s 2011 uprising against long-serving ruler Hosni Mubarak, the government blocked communications and cut off nearly all Internet traffic.
Such experiences prompted Sudanese activists to immediately look for alternatives for online access, including the use of virtual private network (VPN) services to bypass controls.
“Shutting down access to online platforms has proved a farce,” said Magdi El Gizouli, a Sudan analyst with the Rift Valley Institute.
“Almost immediately, the bulk of Sudanese Internet users were online through VPN,” he added.
And activists saw the Sudanese government’s heavy-handed move as virtually ineffective.
“It gave people an indication that the government is scared,” said the 25-year-old activist.
“This only strengthened the spirit of revolt in people, as it showed that we are on the right track.”
The 24-year-old also believes the restrictions on online media are “pointless” and have “little to no impact over the demonstrations.”
The government has in past years already moved to curtail online and print media.
And Sudan already has ranked 174 out of 180 on the World Press Freedom index for consecutive years from 2015 to 2018.
In 2018, the country introduced a cybercrime law and amendments to the media law that rights groups see as aiming to tighten online restrictions.
According to a November report by the US-based think tank Freedom House, at least one person has been jailed “for critical commentary shared on social media” in Sudan, and authorities have arrested “numerous journalists and activists for alleged cybercrime.”
But Gizouli says the government’s attempts to crush online dissent have been “to no avail.”
“In many ways, these measures have only reinforced public anger at the government’s securitization of the Internet,” he said.
Social media aids Sudan opposition to spread protests
Social media aids Sudan opposition to spread protests
- Activists have actively documented the confrontations and flooded social media with footage which they claim is “exposing” Bashir’s government
- Other hashtags such as #SudanRevolts and #SudanUprising have also helped build momentum, amassing hundreds of tweets and retweets by the hour
Award winning Al Arabiya reporter recounts horrors of covering Sudan
- Almigdad Hassan describes his journey covering killings, hunger and disease
- RSF continues onslaught as world fails to stop Sudan war
LONDON: When war erupted in Sudan in April 2023, Almigdad Hassan, a 27-year-old pharmacy graduate from the University of Khartoum, had just begun his first job at a pharmaceutical company.
Within days, the explosions that trapped him in the capital pushed him into frontline war reporting for Saudi Arabia broadcasters Al Arabiya and Al Hadath.
It was a decision that would later earn him an international free press award for courageous coverage of one of the world’s most underreported and inaccessible humanitarian catastrophes.
As most residents fled Khartoum, Hassan said he felt compelled to stay.
“Something inside me was driving me to stay, but I didn’t know what it was,” Hassan told Arab News after winning the Newcomer of the Year award from Free Press Unlimited, a Netherlands-based international press freedom organization.
“I just felt that this was my chance to use my talent in media to do something for my people and humanity.”
At the time, he took three days to accept Al Arabiya’s offer to become an official war correspondent, following a previous internship with the network.
He did not anticipate that the power struggle between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Abu Dhabi-backed Rapid Support Forces would spiral into a protracted war — now nearing its third anniversary and widely described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
“Things escalated so quickly in Khartoum. Main roads and bridges were blocked, armored vehicles and military checkpoints were seen everywhere,” Hassan said, referring to the RSF’s seizure of Khartoum International Airport, the presidential palace, and several military bases in April 2023.
“Every time I carried my equipment and stepped outside to report, I did not know whether I would reach my assignment or make it back home. Every decision put my life at risk.”
He shared harrowing testimonies from survivors in displacement camps in El-Obeid, North Kordofan, where residents had fled violence in the RSF-controlled towns of Kadugli and Dilling in South Kordofan before their liberation during a major SAF army breakthrough last fortnight.
“I heard more than 10 accounts of grave human rights violations, including mass killings, torture, widespread gang rape, and arbitrary imprisonment,” Hassan said of his reporting last December.
Hassan recounted 15 months of reporting from RSF-controlled Khartoum before the SAF retook the capital last March, describing it as “the darkest time of my life.”
“Khartoum was hell back then. It was the worst place in the world in terms of security and the violation of every basic human right to a level no one can imagine,” Hassan said.
He recalled that the most harrowing scenes he witnessed came within the first week of the war, when “bodies of residents lay decomposing in the streets and were eaten by dogs.”
“This was the moment I realized our humanity was being erased, just as those bodies were slowly vanishing,” Hassan said, “but it reinforced my belief that documenting these horrors was my mission, no matter the risks.”
He reported attacks involving killings, rape, and arbitrary kidnappings carried out inside private homes. He also pointed to unofficial mass graves hastily dug into residential streets to bury the dead, while some bodies were left to decompose inside houses.
“The armed men would celebrate killing residents because anyone living in army-controlled areas was seen as supportive of the army,” Hassan said.
“These are not only media narratives. It is a reality people lived.”
Since the war began, both the RSF and SAF have been accused of committing atrocities. However, the RSF has been accused of genocide against non-Arab groups such as the Masalit, Fur, and Zaghawa tribes in West Darfur. Abu Dhabi has been accused of backing the RSF.
Last year, a detailed report produced by Amnesty International provides evidence for the presence of UAE armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles in Sudan being used by the RSF in particular. Amnesty also accuses the RSF of war crimes.
In August 2024, 15 months into the war, the UN-backed Famine Review Committee of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification declared famine in North Darfur’s Zamzam displacement camp, which had been under RSF blockade — the committee’s first such determination in more than seven years.
Last November, the UN declared famine in RSF-controlled Al-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, and Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan, warning that a further 20 areas across Darfur and Greater Kordofan were at risk in what it described as “the world’s largest hunger crisis.”
Last fortnight, the global hunger monitor issued an alert saying famine thresholds for acute malnutrition had been surpassed in the contested North Darfur localities of Um Baru and Kernoi.
Hassan pointed to the lack of safety and severe movement restrictions in RSF-controlled areas, describing neighborhoods as “largely emptied of residents” and cut off, with no services or medical supplies.
By autumn 2024, months before Khartoum was reclaimed by the army, residents in some neighborhoods were dying from diseases such as dengue fever, with no access to basic medical supplies or care.
Hospitals, he said, were reporting at least four deaths a day.
During the outbreak, which also infected some of his fellow journalists, Hassan said he relied on his training as a pharmacist to assess the risks but was still “scared for my life, knowing the risk was high and there was little protection.”
He said he felt a responsibility to document both the military and humanitarian dimensions of the war, particularly in the absence of any rule of law or effective security presence.
People, he noted, were entirely dependent on humanitarian support at a time when aid organizations were denied access.
“It was hard to witness this as a human being, let alone document it as a journalist,” he said. “Even enemies have basic human rights that need to be maintained, but unfortunately, what I saw was that fighters and armed militia got used to the act of killing in a horrific manner.”
The RSF, he said, engaged in direct clashes that killed civilians while also burning entire villages and looting livestock, shops, and property. Once-bustling roads in Khartoum had become deserted, unrecognizable corridors of destruction.
According to UN figures, the conflict has displaced roughly 14 million people and killed hundreds of thousands.
Hassan said his work as a journalist allowed limited movement around Khartoum after complex security arrangements with both sides — a privilege unavailable to most civilians.
“Yet, we were often caught in crossfire and at risk of being killed by the other warring party, which viewed us as siding with the enemy,” he said.
“As journalists, we relied on solar power to charge our equipment and stay connected, which gave us more access than ordinary citizens. Even then, once we left our office — often our only safe space — we were completely isolated. If something happened to you in the streets, no one would know.”
Beyond the devastating loss of human life, Hassan said the violations extended to Sudan’s cultural heritage and national history.
Reporting from the aftermath of attacks on the presidential palace and the national museum, he said he witnessed the destruction and looting of artifacts tracing the country’s history since independence.
“I watched the country’s history being erased in front of my eyes,” he said, referring to damaged artifacts, gifts from earlier eras, and the destruction of classic cars once used by former presidents.
“I realized the brutality of this war when I saw people killing their own countrymen and destroying their own culture, heritage and history.”
Hassan described residents’ “hysterical happiness” in every area retaken by the army. Many, he said, likened life under RSF rule to “colonialism,” saying they were treated like foreigners rather than Sudanese.
Though both sides have been accused of violations, Hassan said people want a ruling authority that restores the basic dignity and human rights they lost.
In announcing the award, Free Press Unlimited said Hassan was recognized for his “dedication, courage, and ability to deliver compelling, accurate reporting under extreme conditions.”
Hassan said the recognition deepened his sense of responsibility toward humanity and strengthened his determination to continue reporting on the devastating war.
“With time, I understood the importance of what I do,” he said. “I realized how journalism can protect lives and deliver voices that would otherwise go unheard.”
He described the award as a shared responsibility with the international community. With his work now recognized globally, Hassan said his reach — and his mission — has only grown.
“It is no longer a job. It is my mission.”
