SUDAN NEWS ALERT: Forbes - Sudan’s Tarco Aviation Eyes West African Pilgrim Traffic

29/11/19: Forbes - Sudan’s Tarco Aviation Eyes West African Pilgrim Traffic, by Martin Rivers

 Sudanese carrier Tarco Aviation is exploring the possibility of launching transit flights from West Africa to Saudi Arabia through its base in Khartoum.

 Flights via Sudan would offer better connecting times than most alternative routings, said Bushra Abushora, strategic planning director at Tarco.

Note: ّ

In an article published in Sudanese outlet Al-Intibaha (18 May 2019), Tarco General Manager Saad Babiker denied accusations that members of Omar al-Bashir’s regime are Tarco shareholders. ّIt has been alleged that among Tarco’s board of directors are former foreign minister Ibrahim Ghandour, national intelligence director Abubakr Demblab, and former government official Al-Tayeb Abu Qenaya.

SUDAN NEWS ALERT: Radio Dabanga - Darfuri students continue sit-in in Khartoum

29/11/19: Radio Dabanga - Darfuri students continue sit-in in Khartoum

 Radio Dabanga reports on the fourth day of the sit-in by Darfuri students from the Northern state's Dongola University in front of the Ministry of Higher Education in Khartoum against “racist practices” by the university administration.

The issue began when the university administration demanded that the students form a student committee to negotiate with the university administration about their complaints concerning the shortage of lecturers and badly equipped training units.

 When the students did so, the administration accused four Darfuri members of the committee of “inciting” the other students to complain. In response, more than 200 students from the Faculty of Computer Science at Dongola University resigned.

 Radio Dabanga’s sources have reported that a group of residents attacked Darfuri students after a quarrel between two students about whether or not the sit-in should be broken up.

SUDAN NEWS ALERT: Radio Dabanga - Sudan social media activists harassed and bribed by authorities

29/11/19: Radio Dabanga - Sudan social media activists harassed and bribed by authorities

 Radio Dabanga reports that Sudanese social media activists said they have repeatedly been harassed, threatened, assaulted, chased away and bribed by the authorities while covering events in Khartoum.

 The activists said that they try to fill “the vacuum in news reporting about sensitive issues that has been created by satellite channels and newspapers still controlled by figures of the former regime”.

 The activist asserted that they have been offered money or a better-paying job in a commercial enterprise, in exchange for not covering events or for covering events opposing the popular uprising.

 “They use the carrot as a weapon,” one of the activists said.

SUDAN NEWS ALERT: Multiple sources – Sudan's former ruling party rejects law dissolving it

29/11/19: Multiple sources – Sudan's former ruling party rejects law dissolving it

AFP

Reuters

 Sudan’s former ruling National Congress Party of ousted president Omar al-Bashir rejected a law passed by transitional authorities to dissolve the NCP and seize its assets, vowing to continue internal reform efforts.

 In a statement, the NCP said the move “would add nothing to the country but tension.” The NCP also lambasted the Forces for Freedom and Change for its “reckless decisions [which] want to return Sudan to the malicious, vicious cycle that has held back the country for the past 63 years.”

 The NCP said its right to participate in political life was guaranteed by national and international statutes.

 Hardline Islamist cleric Mohamed Ali Jazuli warned that the law had potential to trigger a civil war, later telling AFP that the decision to adopt the law was "unjust, arbitrary and authoritarian.”

SUDAN NEWS ALERT: Multiple sources - Sudan disbands National Congress Party, overturns moral policing law

29/11/19: Multiple sources – Sudan disbands National Congress Party, overturns moral policing law

AP, by Noha Elhennawy

AFP

Times, by Jane Flanagan

 Sudan’s transitional government announced it overturned a moral policing law that criminalized revealing clothing for women, and moved to dissolve Sudan’s former ruling National Congress Party (NCP), fulfilling two major demands from the country’s pro-democracy protesters.

 The women’s rights activist Hadia Hasaballah told the Times that the repeal of the law “is a culmination of the courageous struggles of women for 30 years.”

 Prime Minister Hamdok tweeted that the bill dismantling al-Bashir’s NCP party is not the outcome of “a quest of vengeance but rather to preserve and restore the dignity of our people who have grown weary of the injustice under the hands of NCP, who have looted & hindered the development of this great nation.”

 Sudan’s Justice Minister Nasr-Eddin Abdul-Bari announced that the law passed by the interim government would transfer all assets and funds of al-Bashir’s party to the state treasury.

SUDAN NEWS ALERT: BBC - Sudan crisis: Women praise end of strict public order law

29/11/19: BBC - Sudan crisis: Women praise end of strict public order law

The BBC report that Sudan has repealed a restrictive public order law that controlled how women acted and dressed in public, and has banned the National Congress Party (NCP) for ten years.

 Human rights activist Hala al-Karib told BBC Newsday that repealing the law was a "massive step" for Sudan, but more needed to be done to end "a very discriminatory legal framework".

 The BBC’s Sudan analyst James Copnall said the application of the law underlined the divisions and tensions within Sudanese society, as authorities used it to target poorer women from the marginalised peripheries.

 The BBC note that the dissolving of the NCP means that authorities can seize its assets, with Copnall adding that “nobody other than its partisans will mourn the NCP, which is blamed for creating so much misery.”

SUDAN INSIGHT ALERT: Guardian - Sudan ‘on path to democracy’ as ex-ruling party is dissolved

29/11/19: Guardian - Sudan ‘on path to democracy’ as ex-ruling party is dissolved, by Jason Burke and Zeinab Mohammed Salih

 The Guardian report that Sudanese activists have welcomed a decision by Sudan’s transitional government to dissolve the former ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and repeal a series of laws used to regulate women’s behaviour under the former president Omar al-Bashir.

 However, Nic Cheeseman, an expert in African politics at Birmingham University, asked: “As ever the question in Sudan is: is this going to be superficial and cosmetic or can the core of the regime remain?”

 Cheeseman went on to highlight the danger that the dissolution of the NCP could simply be a “savvy move” allowing the party to be “rebadged as something new and shiny”.