Mothers of the Revolution
By Lucy Provan and Alice Rowsome | New Internationalist | 28 October 2020
In 2019, Sudanese strongman Omar al-Bashir was brought down in a revolution orchestrated largely by women. But while the dictator might have gone, the divisions wrought by his 30-year rule endure. Lucy Provan and Alice Rowsome discover that for the women who campaigned against him, the revolution has only just begun.
On 8 April 2019 Alaa Salah, 22, is standing on top of a car in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. She wears a white tobe – a traditional Sudanese dress – and gold moon-shaped earrings. With one hand in the air, she addresses the crowd:
‘These military men disfigured Islam. They imprisoned us in the name of religion, burned us in the name of religion… killed us in the name of religion. But Islam tells us to speak up and fight against tyrants… The bullet doesn’t kill. What kills is the silence of the people.’ Alaa demands the fall of Sudan’s dictator, Omar al-Bashir. The crowd cries back: ‘Revolution!’
