BBC HARDtalk: Abdalla Hamdok Former PM of Sudan

THANKS to a Sudanese reader in England for sending in a link to this interview aired on 1 Feb 2024. Let's hope Dr Hamdok stays strong and well. He is a thoroughly decent man with the calmness and patience of a saint. Sudan needs more great humanitarians and peacemakers like him.

BBC TV interview

HARDtalk

Abdalla Hamdok - Former Prime Minister of Sudan

Zeinab Badawi speaks to the former prime minister of Sudan Abdalla Hamdok. He is at the heart of the negotiations to bring peace to the country after ten months of conflict in which thousands have died and millions have been displaced. Can his efforts succeed?

Click here to see the full interview, free of charge:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001vypz/hardtalk-abdalla-hamdok-former-prime-minister-of-sudan

Duration 25 mins

First shown 1 Feb 2024

Available for 11 months

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POSTSCRIPT from Sudan Watch Editor

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster with a royal charter. Its headquarters are at Broadcasting House in London, England, United Kingdom.

Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current state with its current name on 1 January 1927. 

The oldest and largest local and global broadcaster by stature and by number of employees, the BBC employs over 21,000 staff in total, of whom approximately 17,900 are in public-sector broadcasting.

The BBC is funded by the British people. Every household, company and organisation in the UK pays a compulsory Licence Fee. Currently, a household Licence Fee averages £13.25 GBP per month. All households with people over 75 are entitled to a free TV Licence paid by the BBC.

Photo: The new extension to the BBC's Broadcasting House, completed in 2012. Source: Wikipedia

The BBC proudly belongs to the nation and ensures that the BBC's radio, television and online services are made freely available, without commercial advertising, to anyone, anywhere in the world including free access to its unrivalled databases of news, reports, interviews, discussions, education, podcasts, dramas, films, documentaries, music, entertainment and catch-up. 

The BBC World Service is an international news service available on radio, television and online. It provides impartial news reports and analysis in English and 40 other languages including Arabic, Persian and Pidgin. Click here to read about BBC World Service radio and how to receive it. 

Click here to get the BBC's news in your language. Note that emergency radio services are offered and provided by the BBC to countries where there is war and/or little radio, television, telecoms, internet infrastructure.

Photo: Television pioneer John Logie Baird (seen here in 1917) televised the BBC's first drama, The Man with the Flower in His Mouth, on 14 July 1930, and the first live outside broadcast, The Derby, on 2 June 1931. 

John Logie Baird FRSE (13 August 1888 – 14 June 1946) was a Scottish inventor, electrical engineer, and innovator who demonstrated the world's first live working television system on 26 January 1926. He went on to invent the first publicly demonstrated colour television system and the first viable purely electronic colour television picture tube. Source: Wikipedia

Photo: BBC Scotland building, BBC Pacific Quay in Glasgow, Scotland which was opened in 2007. Source: Wikipedia

Photo: A statue of George Orwell by the British sculptor Martin Jenning was unveiled on 7 November 2017 outside Broadcasting House, the headquarters of the BBC, in  London. Source: Wikipedia

Photo: The main entrance to Broadcasting House in 2019. Source: Wikipedia

Read more at Wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC

UPDATE Mon 12 Feb 2024: added last lines to intro, changed Saint to saint.

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Sudan: Measles in Khartoum and White Nile State

Report at BBC News Live Reporting - bbc.com/africalive
By BBC Arabic's Sudan Lifeline radio
Additional reporting by Will Ross
Published Monday 03 July 2023, 13:17 BST - here is a full copy:

Sudan doctor warns of rise in measles cases amid conflict

There has been a rise in the number of measles cases in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, because the ongoing conflict is preventing vaccinations, a paediatrician has told the BBC.

Speaking to the Sudan Lifeline programme, Dr Mohamed al-Taher, who is based in Khartoum, said there was a shortage of vaccines, which could lead to the outbreak of diseases among children.

"Vaccination is the responsibility of the ministry of health, yet the ministry cannot carry out its role as regards the vaccination process," he said..

"There is a shortage in the measles vaccine and a number of cases have already occurred among children and they are expected to be very severe... it will be very severe because their bodies will not be resisting it."

With frequent aerial bombardment and clashes in densely populated urban areas, it's extremely dangerous to try to reach clinics.

Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) has warned that as people flee their homes there are increasing cases of measles and malnutrition in camps in White Nile state, south of the capital. 

MSF says communities have reported a rise in child mortality much of it due to suspected cases of measles. 

Image caption: The fighting between the army and the RSF militia began in April

Click here to view original.

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Related reports

Sudan Watch - Monday, June 26, 2023

South Sudan: Measles outbreak in Unity State

Click here to check if you or your child has measles

https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2023/06/south-sudan-measles-outbreak-in-unity.html

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Sudan Watch - Saturday, July 01, 2023

South Sudan: Unity State launch measles vaccination

https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2023/05/south-sudan-unity-state-launch-measles.html

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Sudan Watch - Sunday, July 02, 2023

Sudan: Vaccine hero on front lines uses auto rickshaw

https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2023/06/sudan-vaccine-hero-on-front-lines-uses.html

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Sudan: 'Mainly girls' targeted in Khartoum sexual attacks. Doctors shaken by rape in Bahri & Khartoum

NOTE, writers aren't careful enough with words. This report uses "war" to describe the conflict in Sudan. Sudan's crisis and fighting is not a war. Yet. 

Also, sexual violence is reported as mainly females targeted. Males are too. To be fair, help and support for male victims should be included in news reports. It would help people to understand the horrors of sexual violence.

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Report at BBC News Live Reporting Sudan

Published Thursday 22 June 2023, 18:14 - here is a full copy:

'Mainly girls' targeted in Khartoum sexual attacks

The head of a unit combating sexual violence against women in Sudan has told the BBC's Sudan Lifeline radio that it is estimated that only 2% of cases are being recorded.

Soulima Ishaq said her team had registered 36 cases in the capital, Khartoum, since the conflict began in April.

“In Khartoum, different ages are targeted, ranging from 12 to 18. There are many stories that are too painful to be told. What hurts me most is the narratives related of the little girls - and of the mothers who suffer from sexual violence in front of their children,” she said.

The devastation of the war, being fought between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), is hard for people in Khartoum to understand.

City resident Abul-kareem Zakariah told the BBC his house had been demolished last week and his family now live in a tent in a make-shift camp set up on a street in eastern Khartoum.

“My house was hit by a Sudanese army-affiliated drone. I do not know the reason of the airstrike as I do not belong to the RSF and members of the RSF do not dwell in my house," he said.

“We are now homeless, completely outdoors. My children do not have the simplest elements of life. This is unfair.”

More on Sudan's conflict:

Doctors shaken by rape in Bahri and Khartoum

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-65845830

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Sudan: West Darfur Governor Khamis Abakar killed

Report at BBC News - bbc.co.uk/news/world/africa
By Mercy Juma, BBC News
Dated Thursday 15 June 2023 - full copy:

Sudan conflict: West Darfur governor killed after genocide claim

West Darfur Governor Khamis Abakar said people from his 

Massalit ethnic group were being targeted in El Geneina

A governor from Sudan's Darfur region has been killed hours after accusing the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of committing genocide.

In a TV interview, Khamis Abakar had asked for international intervention to stop violence in West Darfur he blamed on the RSF and its Arab militia allies.

The conflict that erupted two months ago between the RSF and army has inflamed ethnic tensions in Darfur.

The army said the RSF abducted Abakar and executed him, which it denies.

He is the most senior official known to have been killed since the conflict began in April.

Video footage circulating on social media appears to show a group of armed men, some wearing RSF uniforms, detaining the governor of West Darfur state on Wednesday. 

But the RSF blamed "outlaws" for his death, saying its fighters had tried to protect Abakar by taking him to their headquarters in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur.

It was then overrun and the governor kidnapped and "assassinated in cold blood", the RSF said.

• BBC Africa Live: Updates from the continent
• The accountant fighting for his people in Darfur
• What is going on in Sudan? A simple guide

Black African and Arab communities in Darfur have long been at loggerheads - with the worst violence erupting two decades ago when non-Arabs took up arms accusing the government of discrimination.

In response the government armed Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed. They were accused of widespread atrocities and ethnic killings, described as the first genocide of the 21st Century. 

The RSF was born out of these Janjaweed fighters - and now they and other Arab militias have again been accused of targeting African communities, going on the rampage in El Geneina.

The city is a symbol of black African power in Darfur and many people from the Massalit ethnic group live there.

"Civilians are being killed randomly and in large numbers," Governor Abakar told Saudi-owned Al-Hadath TV on Wednesday, saying the army was doing nothing to help those under attack.

Last week he told BBC Arabic's emergency pop-up Sudan radio service that the killings were especially targeting his Massalit group: "El Geneina city has been attacked from three directions: east, south and west.

"These people have been attacked in their homes and displacement camps. People are targeted… on a daily basis, based on their ethnicity."

In a statement condemning his killing, the army said Governor Abakar had been one of the leaders of former rebel groups that signed the historic peace agreement in 2020 that brought rebels into the then-transitional government. 

In his BBC Sudan Lifeline interview, the governor said that the whole of West Darfur - one of five states in the gold-rich Darfur region - faced a "tragic" situation.

"All the vital facilities in the state have been totally destroyed. Hospitals are not operating. Water sources have been utterly destroyed.

"I am calling on the international and regional community to interfere immediately in West Darfur to save those who are remaining alive in the state," he said - a plea he repeated in his last interview.

On Tuesday, the UN's envoy to Sudan, Volker Perthes, said most of these attacks did appear to have been committed by Arab militias and the RSF which "could amount to crimes against humanity".

Last week, medical aid charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said estimates suggested that at least 500 people had been killed in El Geneina alone. 

Abakar told the BBC more than 2,000 people had also been wounded, trapped in the city and unable to get treatment.

According to the UN, more than 100,000 people have now fled the fighting in Darfur across the border into neighbouring Chad.

View original: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-65914569

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Could an old tribal foe undercut Sudan’s Hemedti?

See Aljazeera report 03 May 2023 - excerpt:

“If [Hemedti and Hilal] get along, there will be consequences for the African tribes and the internally displaced people. [Hilal and Hemedti] remember the displaced people as being in opposition to them [in previous wars],” warned Zakaria.

“The consequence would make the [Arab] forces much bigger than the [armed non-Arab groups] in [West Darfur].”

View original: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/3/could-an-old-tribal-foe-undercut-sudans-hemedti

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MSF says Sudan healthcare situation is dire. BBC says attacks on hospitals and staff are potential war crimes

ONLY A HANDFUL of the 88 hospitals in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, remain open after weeks of fighting, according to Sudan's Doctors Union. Both sides in Sudan's conflict could be carrying out war crimes on medical facilities and staff, according to evidence seen by BBC News Arabic. Read more.

⚠️Humanitarian operations in many parts of the country may grind to a halt⚠️

Looting and attacks on healthcare facilities and warehouses have reduced our stock significantly.

We call all conflict parties to ensure humanitarian access and allow us to assist the Sudanese people. pic.twitter.com/acpBrpqNyC

— MSF Sudan (@MSF_Sudan) May 26, 2023

Report at BBC News

Dated Friday 26 May 2023 - excerpt:

Sudan conflict: Hospital attacks potential war crimes, BBC told

Both sides in Sudan's conflict could be carrying out war crimes on medical facilities and staff, according to evidence seen by BBC News Arabic.

Hospitals have been hit by airstrikes and artillery fire while patients were still in the building and doctors have also been singled out for attack - all of which are potential war crimes. 

Only a handful of the 88 hospitals in the capital, Khartoum, remain open after weeks of fighting, according to Sudan's Doctors Union.

Full story: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-65718968

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New BBC Arabic radio service airs in Sudan twice daily at 9am on 21,510 kHz and 5pm on 15,310kHz

NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor: Good news. The BBC World Service has launched a new Arabic emergency radio service for Sudan. It starts today Tuesday 2 May 2023 at 3pm GMT (4pm BST, 5pm local time).

The Arabic emergency radio service for Sudan airs twice daily on short wave in Sudan at 7am GMT (8am BST, 9am local time) on 21,510 kHz and at 3pm GMT (4pm BST, 5pm local time) on 15,310kHz

Broadcast live in London, it will bring live updates of the situation on the ground, info on how to access life-saving resources, essential supplies and services, as well as analysis from voices inside and outside Sudan.

The new service for Sudan, launching this afternoon, will be available on radio, online and across social media. 

Read full story at BBC News Media

Published: 12:01 am, Tuesday 2 May 2023

BBC World Service launches emergency radio service for Sudan

The programme, which will be broadcast live in London with input from teams in Amman and Cairo, will air on short wave in Sudan and be available on radio, online and across social media

https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/2023/bbc-world-service-launches-emergency-radio-service-for-sudan

Also, here by Paul Glynn, BBC News, Tue 2 May 2023:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-65447051

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BBC News Arabic and Twitter

الرئيسية - BBC News عربي - BBC News Arabic

https://www.bbc.com/arabic

BBC News عربي - Twitter

@BBCArabic

https://twitter.com/bbcarabic/

BBC Arabic - عاجل - Twitter

@bbcarabicalerts

https://twitter.com/BBCArabicAlerts

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Note, the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) is the national broadcaster of the UK, based at Broadcasting House in London, England. It is the world's oldest national broadcaster, and the largest broadcast operator in the world with a staff of over 35,400. It is funded by an annual licence fee of £159.00 paid by each household in the UK to enable the BBC to remain independent and free without sponsors, adverts, shareholders.

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