Sudan has repealed a restrictive public order law that controlled how women acted and dressed in public.<\/p>\n
On Twitter, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok paid tribute to women<\/a> who had “endured the atrocities that resulted from the implementation of this law”.<\/p>\n The country’s transitional authorities also dissolved the party of former President Omar al-Bashir.<\/p>\n Mr Bashir seized power in a 1989 coup and ruled for nearly 30 years before peaceful protests ousted him in April.<\/p>\n Sudan is currently led by a joint military and civilian council, as well as a civilian-led cabinet headed by Prime Minister Hamdok.<\/p>\n Both the repeal of the public order law and dissolution of the National Congress Party (NCP) were a response to key demands of the protest movement, which aims to dismantle Mr Bashir’s regime.<\/p>\n People celebrated in the streets of the capital Khartoum overnight at news of the moves.<\/p>\n Aisha Musa, one of two women on Sudan’s new Sovereign Council, told BBC Newsday that while the former regime had focused on how women dressed and acted – including preventing women from wearing trousers – it had ignored their education and healthcare.<\/p>\n “It is about time that all this corruption stops, that all this treatment for the women of Sudan stops,” she said.<\/p>\n A 2017 report by two charities described the restrictions<\/a>\u00a0as a blend of legal and moral prohibitions “designed to exclude and intimidate women from actively participating in public life”.<\/p>\n They gave the authorities sweeping powers to arbitrarily control what women wore, whom they spoke to and saw, and any job they might hold – with any perceived offender facing punishment by flogging, or in rare cases stoning and even execution.<\/p>\n Moreover, the public order rules were kept “vague and open-ended leaving them open to exploitation as a social control tool by the authorities,” the report said.<\/p>\n Human rights activist Hala al-Karib told BBC Newsday that repealing the law was a “massive step” for her country, arguing the legislation had enforced the old regime’s ideology, which was “based in terror and discrimination”.<\/p>\n Authorities had had the power to “literally hunt women”, she said, and these laws had disproportionately affected poorer women, women from conflict zones and people outside Khartoum.<\/p>\n But while she welcomed the end of the law, Ms Karib said more needed to be done to end “a very discriminatory legal framework”.<\/p>\n Women were at the forefront of the movement that toppled Mr Bashir. Throughout the demonstrations women were visible on the frontlines, demanding greater freedoms for themselves and their country.<\/p>\n “We need a fair and just country. We have suffered a lot. More than men in many cases. Women should be at the centre of any government,”\u00a0one activist told Al Jazeera news agency in April<\/a>.<\/p>\n One 22-year-old student\u00a0Alaa Salah became an icon for demonstrators<\/a>\u00a0after a video of her leading chants against the former leader went viral, earning her the nickname “Nubian Queen”.<\/p>\n On 25 November, Sudan held its first march in decades for the International Day for Eliminating Violence Against Women.<\/p>\n Dissolving Mr Bashir’s National Congress Party (NCP) means that the authorities can seize the party’s assets. The decree confirmed that a committee would be formed to do this.<\/p>\n This, Mr Hamdok tweeted, was so they could “retrieve the stolen wealth of the people of Sudan”.<\/p>\n The decree also said “none of the symbols of the regime or party would be allowed to engage in any political activity for 10 years”.<\/p>\n A spokeswoman for the Sudanese Professionals Association, the protest group that toppled Mr Bashir, told the BBC this was “a historic moment”.<\/p>\n “This is a moment of relief, because each and every person in Sudan has been affected in some way or the other by this regime in a negative manner,” spokeswoman Samahir Mubarak said.<\/p>\n But the NCP condemned the move as “nothing more than a moral scandal, an act of intellectual bankruptcy and a total failure on the part of the illegal government”.<\/p>\n “The party is not bothered by any law or decision issued against it as the NCP is a strong party and its ideas will prevail,” a post on the party’s Facebook page read.<\/p>\n The unrest in Sudan can be traced back to December 2018, when the Bashir government imposed emergency austerity measures.<\/p>\n Cuts to bread and fuel subsidies sparked demonstrations in the east over living standards, and the anger spread to the capital.<\/p>\n The protests broadened into demands for the removal of Mr Bashir – who had been in charge for 30 years.<\/p>\n In April, the president was overthrown by the military after sit-ins outside the defence ministry, but demonstrators then wanted to ensure authority was swiftly transferred to a civilian administration.<\/p>\n A transitional government which came to power in August has vowed to reunite the country.<\/p>\n By James Copnall, BBC News, Sudan analyst<\/strong><\/p>\n The decision to revoke the Public Order Law is a momentous step. The authorities used it in particular to control women. Some received 40 lashes for wearing trousers in public.<\/p>\n The way the law was applied underlined the divisions and tensions within Sudanese society.<\/p>\n In recent years it was common to see rich Khartoum women wearing trousers in public – while those targeted by the morality police were often poorer women from the marginalised areas on the periphery of this vast country.<\/p>\n The NCP, meanwhile, was a colossus, the political vehicle for a regime which tried to reshape every part of Sudanese life – and cracked down extremely hard on anybody who disagreed.<\/p>\n The authorities hope that dismantling the NCP will help stop the old regime from undermining the transitional government.<\/p>\n There is a certain irony about a transitional government set up to move the country to democracy banning a political party. But nobody other than its partisans will mourn the NCP, which is blamed for creating so much misery.<\/p>\n Those who led the protests – and women’s rights activists in particular – are celebrating the demise of the NCP and the law, even if they recognise this is just the start of a longer struggle to transform Sudan.<\/p>\n Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What was the public order law?<\/h2>\n
What about Mr Bashir’s party?<\/h2>\n
What’s happened in Sudan?<\/h2>\n
One law for the rich…<\/h2>\n