Sudan: Singer Stopped, Arrested for Wearing Pants Deemed “Too Tight”

The singer Mona Magdi was arrested by the Sudanese police for wearing pants deemed “too tight”. A situation that is shaking Sudan now, because it brings the population to fierce disputes.

After the journalist Loubna al-Hussein, brought before the courts of Khartoum for the same cause in 2009, it is now the turn of the singer Mona Magdi. The latter has been arrested and will be tried for wearing pants that seems to be too stuck to the body.

Indeed, a Sudanese law known as “general discipline”, allows to arrest people who dress in a manner considered disrespectful by the police. A law that, moreover, only targets women.

To enforce it, the Sudanese regime has dedicated a special police force, the strongest and most active police section. Just as, a special court and a judge. This police catches women, judges them, penalizes them and whips them …

Sudan: Singer Stopped, Arrested for Wearing Pants Deemed “Too Tight”

An arrest “too much” that has aroused the indignation of thousands of Internet users who claims the cancellation of the said law of general discipline.

But why does not the Sudanese government repeal this law? “The government thinks this law of general discipline represents it. She represents her religious ideology, her vision of women. This government does not believe in women’s freedom or rights. He considers her a second-class citizen. Everything about her is forbidden and shameful … “ replies Amal Habbani, a member of the association ” No to the oppression of women “.

Sudan’s women’s rights activist Abir Elmugammar recalls: ” We have not always been like that in Sudan. Women in the 60s and 70s were of another level, they were free, they did not put on a veil, they dressed as they wished, they even put on miniskirts.
What is happening today is directly related to the regime in Khartoum. It is a regime that uses religion for its ends, seeking to defeat all modern thought. Today, in Sudan we suffer from much more serious problems than the singer’s pants. We are facing a huge economic crisis.

But the current power is powerless to find solutions; He prefers to distract the Sudanese society by this kind of stories. The law of general discipline applies in the name of religion, it is a facet of the Islamic project of the State. Historically, political Islam is hostile to women, it persecutes them .

Last April, during his fifth visit to Sudan, Aristide Nononci, the UN’s independent expert on the human rights situation in Sudan called on the state to stop the prosecution of women whose clothing is deemed inappropriate.