The undersigned 26 organizations from the Middle East and North Africa are concerned for the life of prominent human rights defender Dr. Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, who has been held in prison without charge or trial since December 7, 2016. Although two months have passed since he was detained, the Sudanese authorities have yet to announce the reasons for his arrest. His family has been permitted to visit him only once in the past 50 days, on January 27, 2017. The visit came after Adam staged a hunger strike to protest his detention, the lack of charges against him, his torture and ill treatment, and the denial of medication.
His family announced after the visit that Adam is in poor health and has lost a drastic amount of weight. They reported that he had agreed to suspend his hunger strike for one week to allow the Sudanese authorities to disclose the grounds for his detention and either charge or release him. The authorities disregarded Adam and his family’s pleas to end the arbitrary detention and release him or grant him a fair trial, prompting Adam to resume his hunger strike. The authorities have thus far not responded to his legitimate demands.
The Sudanese authorities’ violations against Mudawi Adam are part of a broad, systematic campaign against human rights defenders in Sudan in recent years. Numerous defenders have been forced to choose exile over prison, torture, arbitrary detention, and sexual violence. The authorities have also restricted the free operation of civil society, prohibited activists from travel, and falsified charges against them. Several of the most prominent cases have been the detention of prominent human rights defender Amin Mekki Medani, the President of the Confederation of Sudanese Civil Society Organizations, the Vice-President of the Civil Society Initiative, and the former President of the Sudanese Human Rights Observatory, along with Faruq Abu Eisa, the President of the Sudanese Opposition Umbrella Group –National Consensus Forces (NCF), as well as political activist Farah Ibrahim. They were all detained in December 2014 for five months after signing “The Sudan Call,” a declaration on the “Establishment of a State of Citizenship and Democracy.”