Statements
UNS Declaration Regarding the Recent Human Rights Violations in Sudan
February 22, 2019
We, the undersigned, condemn the recent human rights violations perpetrated by the government of Sudan against citizens exercising their democratic and inalienable right to peaceful protest.
Since December 2018, international human rights organization Human Rights Watch has reported the arrest and detention of dozens of peaceful protestors by the Sudanese security forces, such as human rights defender Rudwan Dawod. In December, eleven members of the Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate were detained without legal cause, while the government attacked hospitals and protesters with live ammunition and tear gas. While in detention by security forces, civilians are subjected to beatings, torture, and other forms of abuse. In January, Ahmed Elkhair, a school teacher from Khashm El Girba in Eastern Sudan, was tortured to death by the security forces. This has been recently confirmed by government prosecutors. Meanwhile, the Sudanese government continues its human rights abuses, such as using live ammunition against peaceful protestors, the use of excessive physical violence, as well as unlawfully raiding homes.
As Nubiologists, we devote our lives to the study of the past and present people and cultures of Egypt and the Sudan. Such a scholarly practice can never be allowed to fetishize its object of research at the cost of neglecting the social and political context that allows that research to take place. In the face of oppression and violence, which does not only affect those in Sudan who work with us, who study with us, who teach us, but also the entire society of which they are part, we cannot remain silent.
As Nubiologists and scholars who bear witness every day to both prosperity and conflict along the Nile, we stand in solidarity with those who exercise their democratic and inalienable right to peaceful protest and demand an immediate halt to the intolerable aggression of the Sudanese government, which so far has been grossly neglected by the international community.
Signatories from the Union for Nubian Studies
- Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei, Independent Scholar
- Alexandros Tsakos, University of Bergen
- Giovanni Ruffini, Fairfield University
- Shayla Monroe, University of California Santa Barbara
- So Miyagawa, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Other Signatories
- Solange Ashby, Independent Scholar
- Josef Ben Levi, Independent Scholar
- Anne M. Jennings, Anthropologist
- Bruce Williams, Archaeologist
- Debora Heard, Archaeologist
- Charles A. Grantham, Independent Scholar
- Angelika Jakobi, University of Cologne
- Dimah Mahmoud, Independent Scholar
- Daniele Salvoldi, Egyptologist
- Brenda J. Baker, Bioarchaeologist
- Rosetta Cash, Independent Scholar
- Effrosyni Zacharopoulou, Independent Scholar
- Mohamed Ali, Independent Scholar
- Kristina Richardson, Queens College, CUNY
- Mary Rambaran-Olm, Independent Scholar
- Erik Wade, Universität Bonn
- William Carruthers, University of East Anglia
- Christina Riggs, University of East Anglia and All Souls College, Oxford
- Jessica Parr, Simmons University
- Brandon W. Hawk, Rhode Island College
- Christina Lee, University of Nottingham
- Eduardo Ramos, Penn State University
- Carla María Thomas, Florida Atlantic University
- Shela Raman McCabe, University of Notre Dame
- Eileen A. Joy, Publisher, punctum books
- Martin Findell, University of Nottingham
- Jonathan Hsy, George Washington University
- Elaine Treharne, Stanford University
- Matthias Rein, Saarland University
- Nahir I. Otaño Gracia, Beloit College
- Joyce Haynes, Independent Scholar
- Salim Faraji, California State University, Dominguez Hills
- Kathryn Howley, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU
- Jasmin Miller, University of California, Berkeley
- Uffe Steffensen, Archaeologist