February 2024
Mesahat Newsletter February 2024
In This Newsletter:
1. Doctors Without Borders: A child dies every two hours in a Sudan camp for displaced people.
2. Citizens in the city of Port Sudan are trying to connect to the Internet from the Canar company office, to receive or transfer money through banking apps or to send a message to their families outside Sudan.
3. During the war, a schoolyard in Port Sudan turned into a combat training site for women and girls.
4. The war in Sudan completes its tenth month… The army sets conditions for the resumption of Jeddah talks… Battles in the capital and El Fasher.
5. Martin Griffiths, head of the UN emergency relief agency, is appealing to the world to help Sudan, where war has raged for the past 10 months.
6. The story of the kidnapping and assault of a Sudanese woman by the Rapid Support Forces.
7. Communications outage in Sudan for 22 consecutive days, and reports of a partial return to the network.
8. Noon Feminist Movement launches the “War on Women’s Bodies in Sudan” campaign.
9.Student Naira Al Zoghbi commits suicide after being blackmailed.
10. The Chamber of Medicine is asking the government for $22 million to release important raw materials.
11. Mesahat Foundation launches a security and safety guide booklet for foreigners and asylum seekers in Egypt.
12. TikToker Suzy Al-Udruny arrested.
13. Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court: Engagement in Homosexual Acts is Grounds for Dismissal from Public Office.
Doctors Without Borders: A child dies every two hours in a Sudan camp for displaced people
The war in Sudan has caused a humanitarian crisis, especially in North Darfur, where at least 13 children die every day from malnutrition in a camp for displaced people due to a lack of aid. Doctors Without Borders, the only medical provider, is struggling to keep up with the overwhelming needs. This is a reflection of the conditions in camps across Sudan and neighboring countries, and the lack of medical aid and basic living essentials such as food and water. This affects Sudanese people of sexual and gender diversity, who were forced by the war to seek refuge in different countries and various refugee camps, with difficulty accessing treatments and services related to sexual and physical health.
More details: https://bit.ly/3PfyRsa
Citizens in the city of Port Sudan are trying to connect to the Internet from the Canar company office, to receive or transfer money through banking apps or to send a message to their families outside Sudan
A video clip showed residents of Port Sudan gathering around the offices of Canar Communications, hoping to get internet connection to conduct electronic financial transactions or contact their families abroad.
More details: https://bit.ly/4c8ZkBx
During the war, a schoolyard in Port Sudan turned into a combat training site for women and girls
A schoolyard in Port Sudan, where children studied and played before the war, has been transformed into a combat training site for women and girls. Students, teachers and housewives gather there daily to learn how to shoot machine guns. Some are here out of loyalty to their sons, fathers, uncles and brothers, the conscripts who have been deployed across the country in the Sudanese Armed Forces' war against the Rapid Support Forces. Others come here out of sheer necessity to protect themselves from assault.
More details: https://bit.ly/3VbM60Z
The war in Sudan completes its tenth month… The army sets conditions for the resumption of Jeddah talks… Battles in the capital and El Fasher
the war in Sudan completes its tenth month, with no signs of its approaching end, amid continuous change in the country’s political and military composition and the map of its internal and external alliances.
Militarily, fighting intensifies in the cities of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, amid continuous army advances in the city of Omdurman and air bombardment on “Rapid Support” sites in Khartoum and Bahri.
On the humanitarian side, the army commander, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, confirmed that he would not allow humanitarian aid to pass into the areas controlled by the “Rapid Support,” while a sovereign source hinted that this issue would be on the agenda of the Jeddah talks.
More details: https://bit.ly/48Ptveq
Martin Griffiths, head of the UN emergency relief agency, is appealing to the world to help Sudan, where war has raged for the past 10 months
The United Nations warns that $4.1 billion in aid is now needed to stave off famine across Sudan.
The fighting is spreading in sensitive areas, including Al-Jazira State, the country's breadbasket.
As a result, at least 18 million people now suffer from acute food insecurity.
This means that they do not have enough food and do not know where their next meal will come from.
To make matters worse, there is a shortage of international aid as humanitarian groups compete for funding amid a growing global conflict.
Martin Griffiths, head of the United Nations Emergency Relief Agency, calls it an obscene “competition of suffering.” This week he appealed to the world to help Sudan, where war has raged for the past 10 months.
More details: https://bit.ly/493Q0MV
The story of the kidnapping and assault of a Sudanese woman by the Rapid Support Forces
Rawiya Al-Amin is one of many civilians kidnapped by the Rapid Support Forces. She was brutally stabbed in her genital area and rectum, after being sexually assaulted and tortured by Rapid Support soldiers. She was later transferred to Alia Hospital, where she died of her wounds, according to her relative Muhannad Hashem, a BBC journalist.
More details: https://bit.ly/48Njs9t
Communications outage in Sudan for 22 consecutive days, and reports of a partial return to the network
After 22 consecutive days of communications outage, there was news of a partial return to the Sudanese Telecom network in Sennar, Al-Obeid, Kosti, Blue Nile, and West Kordofan State, A large part of Darfur remains outside coverage.
Several reports also claim that the Rapid Support Forces are behind the communications outages.
This outage impacts access and communication with people of sexual and gender diversity in Sudan for safety and evacuation purposes.
More details: https://bit.ly/3PfzOAK
Noon Feminist Movement launches the “War on Women’s Bodies in Sudan” campaign
Noon movement, in cooperation with Free Southern Foundation, the Sudanese Women’s Rights Action Organization (Suwra), and the Regional Alliance of Women Human Rights Defenders in Southwest Asia and North Africa, launched the “War on Women’s Bodies in Sudan” campaign.
More details: https://bit.ly/3Pfju39
Student Naira Al Zoghbi commits suicide after being blackmailed
A trending hashtag on Egyptian social media demands the rights of student Naira Al-Zoghbi, who ended her life after being blackmailed by one of her colleagues at Al-Arish University, according to reports by Egyptian media.
The Egyptian prosecution ordered the exhumation and autopsy of her body and filed charges of blackmail and violating the privacy of personal life against two of her colleagues.
The prosecution ordered Shorouk Kamal’s father, one of the accused, to be suspended from his work as a policeman so as not to affect the course of events.
The prosecution’s decisions on March 2 were followed by a campaign on X (formerly Twitter) to blog about the case under the hashtag “#Naira’s_colleagues_reveal_her_truth.”
The main goal of the participants in blogging under the hashtag is to deny the blackmail accusation against Shorouk Kamal, a colleague of Naira, and to claim that the deceased student was in a relationship with a delivery worker and that she committed suicide because she was afraid that he had private photos of her.
According to the Matsad2sh, a platform concerned with analyzing popular topics on social media platforms and monitoring misinformation and misleading statements by Egyptian officials and public figures, their team tracked the identities of the accounts participating in the hashtag, and their analysis revealed that there was coordinated activity of dozens of accounts - some of which were recently created in 2024 - that simultaneously started from March 2, based on a tweet from an anonymous source, in addition to previous activity linking these accounts to media campaigns supporting the Egyptian government. Most of the accounts participating in promoting this hashtag have in common that they are fake accounts, with no personal data or real photos of their owners. They also have a small number of followers and rely on the intensity of posting to create a trend. These accounts post the same content with the same comments, and share each other's posts, in a way similar to the work of social bots.
Contrary to what was promoted by the hashtag, they did not find a friend or colleague of the student Naira speaking or writing clearly about her relationship with the alleged delivery worker, except for the anonymous blog post. This is according to the analysis and conclusions of Matsad2sh.
More details: https://bit.ly/49L7oXM / https://bit.ly/49MFWsw
Mesahat Foundation launches a security and safety guide booklet for foreigners and asylum seekers in Egypt
Mesahat Foundation for Sexual and Gender Diversity launched a security and safety guide booklet for foreign residents and asylum seekers in Egypt. The booklet covered the legal conditions of communities of sexual and gender diversity in Egypt, types of legal residency in Egypt, registration with the High Commission for Refugees in Egypt, and the services provided by the Commission and its shortcomings, services provided to foreigners living with HIV, and security advice for queer foreigners and asylum seekers.
More details: https://bit
Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court: Engagement in Homosexual Acts is Grounds for Dismissal from Public Office
In a ruling in July 2023, Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court, the highest court within Egypt’s administrative court system, upheld a decision from a lower court that determined that suspicion of engaging in homosexual activities warrants termination from public office, according to Cairo52 Center The case involved an employee of Maspero, Egypt’s public broadcaster, who was accused by his former spouse of participating in homosexual acts.
This allegation led to his suspension from his job pending an investigation, In July 2021, Egypt’s Administrative Prosecution Authority requested his dismissal from public employment, contending that the employee had engaged in homosexual acts that were deemed inappropriate for a public servant. They asserted that this act constituted a violation of his professional responsibilities and referred the case to the Disciplinary Court to render a verdict.
In June 2023, the Disciplinary Court rendered its decision to terminate the employment of the accused due to his involvement in homosexual acts. The plaintiff lodged an appeal against this decision to the Supreme Administrative Court, which delivered its judgment in July 2023. Before rendering a judgment, the case was referred to the Egyptian State Commissioners (ESC), a consultative judicial body within the Administrative Courts system. The ESC is tasked with aiding judges in deciding cases by providing objective judicial opinions and legal interpretations on matters that lack legal clarity. The ESC issued a report recommending that the plaintiff be reinstated to his position. And despite the positive report from the ESC, the Supreme Administrative Court upheld the judgment terminating the plaintiff’s employment, affirming that there was irrefutable evidence of the plaintiff engaging in homosexual acts and that “removing such an employee from the state’s administrative apparatus has become an unavoidable necessity to preserve the safety of the administrative facility in particular, and the public interest of the state in general.”
According to Cairo52, this judgment establishes a precedent that even without officially being charged with “debauchery,” individuals suspected of engaging in homosexual acts can be dismissed from public office. This type of reasoning has gained traction with the Egyptian judiciary in recent years. Previously, Egypt’s Administrative Courts interpreted Articles 25 and 26 of Law No. 89 of 1960 on the Entry and Exit of Foreigners to mean that individuals suspected of engaging in homosexual acts or being queer should be deported from the country, even if they were never formally charged with “debauchery” or even acquitted by a court of such charges.
More details: https://bit.ly/439rVCG