Sudan Update

Gillian Gibbons is free, but Sudan's Islamist regime continues to attack intellectual freedom in that country. Courtesy of the MEMRI Blog, here are two recent examples:

-On December 6, a Sudanese newspaper reported that five journalists held a press conference to announce that one of them had received a death threat:

The journalist who received the phone call said that the individual, who was calling from Chad, told him that elements in Sudan had offered him $22,000 to assassinate him, and that the assassination had been ordered by elements outside Sudan because of the journalists' opposition to the government and their support for intervention by foreign forces in Darfur.


-While anti-government journalists are getting death threats, individuals who sell controversial books are sent to prison:

A Khartoum criminal court yesterday, December 16, sentenced two Egyptian nationals to six months in prison for harming the religion by marketing books at the Khartoum book fair condemning 'Aisha, the wife of the Prophet Muhammad.


In a December 8 piece for Pajamas Media, Sudanese blogger Drima offered his thoughts on the absurd teddy bear "blasphemy". His comments stand as a damning indictment of what the Islamists have done to his country:

Those we watched angrily protesting love to highlight the supposed immorality of the West – the bars, bare women and “corrupting” freedoms. We pride ourselves on living in a country that is supposedly more moral and therefore automatically better. It’s a false pride, one propagated and encouraged by the propaganda of Sudanese Islamists.

Certainly we have a lot to be proud of as a people with a rich history and culture. The Nubian Civilization, hailed by many experts as one of the greatest that ever existed, is but only one aspect of that. True Sudanese values of generosity and hospitality – ones slowly but surely withering away as oppression tears us – are trademarks we’re well known for. There is, however, nothing for us to be proud of as citizens of a country ruled by a gang of morally bankrupt butchers.