Prior to last month, not many people in the world knew who Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein was. Hardly anyone outside Sudan would have known her and she was probably only well known there because of her column ‘Men Talk’, which had been described as acerbic and which appears regularly in Alsahafa a popular Arabic newspaper. That changed shortly after she and 12 other women were arrested by 20 to 30 police officers at a restaurant in Khartoum, Sudan for wearing trousers.
In Khartoum it is against the law for women to wear trousers; it is considered indecent and the penalty for being caught is flagellation. According to the BBC, some ten of the women immediately accepted that they were guilty of “public indecency.” They were flogged at a police station two days later and fined 250 Sudanese pounds (some US$120). They were reportedly each given ten lashes instead of 40, the highest amount of lashes a woman could receive for committing such a ‘crime.’
Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein, a 30-something-year-old journalist, decided that she had had enough. She refused to admit that she had committed a crime, contacted a lawyer and opted to face trial, even though she was in a position to be granted immunity because she worked with the United Nations in her country as a press officer. It has been reported that she has resigned her UN post. Two other women also opted to be tried.
Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein is Sudanese and therefore for 30-odd years she would have been adhering to the archaic law which seeks to control women by deciding for them, among other things, how they should be attired. She has been described as a relentless critic of the regulations in her country that harass and oppress women.
Like Rosa Parks, who, after four decades of conforming refused to give up her seat at the front of a bus in Alabama in December 1955, Ms al-Hussein, no longer content to simply write about injustice, is seeking to bring about change. She told the BBC in an interview that she was not afraid of being flogged. “Flogging is not pain, flogging is an insult to humans, women and religions,” the BBC quoted her as saying adding, “If the court’s decision is that I be flogged, I want this flogging in public.”
When her trial started, some 50 women, some wearing trousers, stood outside the court to protest, reports said and were removed by baton-wielding, tear gas firing police officers. The trial, which was to have started on Tuesday, was then postponed to September 7.
Like in the case of 17-year-old Nigerian Bariya Bagaza, who was sentenced to 180 lashes in that country after she became pregnant through forced sex with three middle-aged men, most of Ms al-Hussein’s support comes from outside Sudan, a country of 39.4 million people, caught up in a civil war which has been ongoing since early 2003 and in which some 60,000 people (a conservative estimate) from its western region Darfur were reportedly killed so far. Millions more have been displaced by the fighting and in the ensuing crisis violence against women and children, including rape and starvation, is a significant issue. There has been international outrage against these atrocities but no acceptance of responsibility by the Sudanese government, although the International Criminal Court recently charged Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, with crimes against humanity.
With all this going on in Sudan, Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein’s trousers trial might not seem like a big deal, but a lot is at stake here. A not-guilty verdict for her will mean a huge boost for international women’s rights and human rights; the issue is not just about women wearing pants, it’s about human beings controlling their own destiny, something which many of us take for granted.
