Sudan: Video on Kassala Youth Emergency Room

I am IN AWE of @Nas_shagala, just as I am in AWE of the subjects of their videos.

My God, what important work!

Watch this video centering the Kassala emergency response team.

My people are carrying each other, saving one another.https://t.co/4QefDlwu4j#KeepEyesOnSudan

— Munchkin (@BSonblast) December 27, 2023

Here's the video for those who cannot access the microblogging platform X: 

And here is a direct link to the video at YouTube: 

https://youtu.be/GoOIhcRFCIQ?feature=shared

A description of the video at YouTube says, in Arabic and English:

"Kassala Youth Emergency Room 

At a distance of 625 km from the war-torn Khartoum due to the conflict between the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces, the film “Kassala Youth Emergency Room”, documents an initiative by people working in Kassala.

It shows a team of volunteers working for over 102,777 displaced people in Kassala State, noting that this number doubled after the outbreak of war in Wad Madani city on the eighteenth of December. Kassala state and locality are some of the most important destinations in eastern Sudan for survivors of the war in Khartoum, Darfur, and the Gezira.

The film follows the Emergency Room’s volunteers, showcasing their support for those affected by the April 15 war, from evacuation, welcoming and housing in shelters to providing material and psychological support to children throughout the past eight months.

“War is psychological destruction! For us, this is the priority to evacuate people!”

Waad Mahjoub Altahir, Member of the Communications and Public Relations Office Kassala youth emergency room."

ENDS

4 SUDAN FILMS: TMC RSF Janjaweed, bodies in Nile, Hemedti & secret hit squads

NOTE from Sudan Watch Editor: I saw the following film in a tweet I found online last night. I cannot verify the source or footage nor pass it by. Please excuse me if it is fake. To me it looks real.

I have seen the film several times, each time I studied it in detail. I imagined being in the position of the people filmed sitting on the ground, looking up at the (words fail me how to describe them) so-called men in combat uniforms, acting erratic, crazy and self-important. Who are these people, where are they from? Are they drugged, former child soldiers?

Look at the fear on the captives' faces, they look deflated and exhausted. I dread to think what they have seen for their faces and body language to look as they do in the film. Actors can't act in this way.

I find the film shocking and haunting. Anyone watching it who fails to be able to empathise with anyone involved in this film is desensitised to the atrocities committed in Sudan and South Sudan.

Who are the captives in this film? They look like they've been through war. Are they protestors? Rebels? Ex soldiers? They seem shocked, one is lifting a hand to signal a peace sign. Who is caring for them? Where are they now? Do they have family? Are dead bodies of protestors in background?

I must publish this film now in case it disappears before being seen by people in positions of power who could help. The film makes you smell and taste cruelty, the air, mood, fear, despair.

Videos recorded by janjawid members showing tens of dead bodies in the background. #Sudan #SudanUpraising #السودان #العصيان_المدني_الشامل #Internet_Blackout_In_Sudan #IAmTheSudanRevolution pic.twitter.com/sm9QfI2uJq

— Ali Salah (@00AliSalah) 6 June 2019

To see the above tweet and film click here:
https://twitter.com/00AliSalah/status/1136721954885517313?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw 

Sudan Watch Ed: Here are some links showing what people are tweeting, please be cautious and mindful, beware of propaganda before deciding to tweet or re-tweet, many people's lives and livelihoods are at stake: #Sudan  #SudanUpraising   #السودان #العصيان_المدني_الشامل  #Internet_Blackout_In_Sudan  #IAmTheSudanRevolution 
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UPDATE 3: Tue 25 June 2019 18:00 GMT UK

SOME ANSWERS IN THESE 3 IMPORTANT FILMS

1. FROM UK CHANNEL4 NEWS 24 JUNE 2019
"Sudan's 'strongman' fighting protestors"
To see the Channel 4 News film on YouTube click here: https://youtu.be/WbhzzOzWtzM

Watch our @channel4news exclusive: how Sudan's one-time enforcer, Mohamed Hamdan "Hemedti" became the country's new strongman - empowered by EU money + Saudi Arabian & UAE support.

Produced by @DariusBazarganhttps://t.co/OpRawCxrhG

— Yousra Elbagir (@YousraElbagir) 24 June 2019

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2. FROM UK SKY NEWS 22 JUNE 2019

"Hotspots: Inside Sudan and Syria"
To see the Sky News film on YouTube click here: https://youtu.be/yy5jCE58z_o

Sky News

Published at YouTube on 22 Jun 2019

Sky's Stuart Ramsay and Alex Crawford send a special report from the revolution in Sudan and the last stronghold of the Islamic State in Syria.

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3. FROM UK BBC NEWS 13 FEBRUARY 2019:
"Sudan’s Secret Hit Squads Used to Attack Protests" - BBC Africa Eye documentary
To see the BBC film on YouTube click here: https://youtu.be/AuNDd_pteRQ

BBC News Africa

Published at YouTube on 13 Feb 2019

These are images Sudan’s government does not want you to see: teams of masked, plainclothes agents chasing down protesters, beating them, and dragging them off to secret detention centres in Khartoum.

Who are these hit squads? Where are these detention centres? And what happens inside their walls?

BBC Africa Eye has analysed dozens of dramatic videos filmed during the recent uprising, and spoken with witnesses who have survived torture at the hands of the Bashir regime. Some of these protesters tell us about a secret and widely feared holding facility – The Fridge – where the cold is used an instrument of torture.

Investigation led by:

Benjamin Strick

Abdulmoniem Suleiman

Klaas Van Dijken 

Aliaume Leroy  

Produced and Edited by:

Suzanne Vanhooymissen 

Tom Flannery 

Daniel Adamson  

Subscribe: http://bit.ly/subscribetoafrica

Website: https://www.bbc.com/africa

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bbcnewsafrica/

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/bbcafrica/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bbcafrica/

Jan Pronk: Millions of homeless people and children living in forgotten cities

Quote of the Day on refugee camps

"Thatched huts are upgraded into slums. Camp dwellers start exchanging belongings amongst themselves. Barter develops into markets. People try to make a living through prostitution and crime. Idleness fosters addiction to alcohol and drugs. Combatants come to hide themselves for a while within the camp and recruit youngsters for their militias. People in the camps start organizing themselves. The camps develop into cities, with an economy, a power structure and increasing violence.

Camps are cities in suspense. They suffer from shortages of water and sanitation, shaky food deliveries, oscillating relief assistance, despotic rulers, lawlessness and insecurity, both around the camp and inside."

-Jan Pronk, October 2009 (see copy below).

Professor Jan Pronk (pictured above) the UN Secretary General's former Special Representative to Sudan, now lives and works in The Netherlands. Here is a recently published column from Prof. Pronk's website.

Forgotten
By Jan Pronk
SID, 29 October 2009

Millions of people are living in forgotten cities. They are refugees and displaced persons, put away in camps at the margins of the modern world. Hardly ever a camp is closed down. Camps are swelling in order to offer refuge against continuing or newly emerging danger. Generations stay for decades in one and the same camp. They are doomed to die on the same dumping-ground where they had been born.

Is this acceptable? It seems to be, actually. The world outside is hardly offering a perspective on a new life outside the camps, only some to establish a little order within the camps themselves. Sustaining refugee survival within camps is easier and cheaper than halting the violence which they had to escape. They receive food, plastic sheeting, bore-holes and first aid. Clinics are set up to provide mother and child care. Occasionally some children get a little schooling, mostly in the open air, without books, pens, paper, blackboard and chalk and without salaries for the teachers. Thatched huts are upgraded into slums. Camp dwellers start exchanging belongings amongst themselves. Barter develops into markets. People try to make a living through prostitution and crime. Idleness fosters addiction to alcohol and drugs. Combatants come to hide themselves for a while within the camp and recruit youngsters for their militias. People in the camps start organizing themselves. The camps develop into cities, with an economy, a power structure and increasing violence.

Camps are cities in suspense. They suffer from shortages of water and sanitation, shaky food deliveries, oscillating relief assistance, despotic rulers, lawlessness and insecurity, both around the camp and inside.

The joy of having reached a sanctuary can boost a perspective. It can lead to action and persistence. However, in most camps life is marked by traumas and uncertainty. In these camps suffering abounds and life is desolate and empty.

In all refugee camps life and thought are determined by two things only: memories and expectations. Recollections prevail. Inside the camps everything is being relived, time and again. Bombardments and attacks are recalled and retold. Rape and killings come back to mind daily, together with the nightmares of the flight, the threats and terrors on the way, the fear not to last out. Not all refugees are able to reach safety. In Darfur one out of every seven refugees has been killed.

The recollections go together with the hope of a future in safety, outside the camp, and with expectations about life in decency. Camp dwellers are longing for return to the place where they did belong. They cherish the hope of reconstructing hearth and home and the desire resuming life back home or building a new existence somewhere else..

Refugees tell stories, time and again. Twenty five million refugees, and as many stories. In their stories the past prevails. But at the same time they are mesmerized by the future. People hope, without expecting much. They live between hope and desperation.

A camp may seem to be a static unit of time and space, dead and empty. However, it forms part of a turbulent history, part of a life full of tenacity and yearning. Present life within the camps is a function of both the past and the future. It is the sum total of stories, memories and contemplations, nothing more, but also nothing less: when expectations are betrayed and hopes are dashed, there is nothing left.

For refugees and displaced people in camps the present is empty, an endless repetition of nothingness: no jobs; no information; education devoid of sense; food, water, health and security in doubt – and, for the rest, waiting, just waiting, without any expectation. People sense that they have been forgotten, excluded and deprived of their rights. They find that they are voiceless, powerless and without any perspective. This feeling is right. In the eyes of people in the world outside a refugee is a loser, irrelevant, a burden, worthless, unworthy of rights indeed.

The longer the present will last, the emptier life will become. For millions of refugees and displaced people this is the reality of today. For them the future is a void, it means suffering. The past, on the other side, equals violence and death. The world they fled was a jungle. The camp, upon arrival, was a hiding place, an asylum and a sanctuary. However, gradually it became a dump, a junk heap and a prison. Like dumping grounds are being covered with soil to put these out of sight, camps are wrapped up with relief to salve our conscience. Rather than offering women, children, old age people, farmers, villagers and other civilians protection against evil powers that force them to seek refuge in a camp, the world is shielding itself from the camps with a thick layer of indifference. Rather than receiving displaced people in our midst we bury them far away from our own cities, outside our habitat, somewhere deep below the surface of a civilized society, like in dungeons where they easily are forgotten, out of sight, out of the picture, out of our minds.

The longer this lasts, the less hope - “there is nothing left to be done” –, but also: the more bitterness, frustration and resentment. The more refugees consider themselves forgotten, the greater the chance that the violence which they escaped will be fed by camp realities. At a certain moment camp dwellers are no longer interested in a solution of the conflict back home. They may start interpreting the camp as a bulwark behind which walls they cherish their own truths. They then give birth to an offspring which has nothing to loose and will only look forward renewing the fight. The resentment of such a new generation will not only be turned towards the enemy of their parents and ancestors, but against the world as a whole: “The world has written us off, now we are going to write off the world”.

(http://www.sidint.net/forgotten/)

About Jan

Jan Pronk is President of SID as well as Professor of Theory and Practice of International Development at ISS, the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands. From 2004 to 2006 he was Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations in Sudan, where he was leading the UN peace-keeping operation (UNMIS). He also served as Minister for Development Cooperation and Minister for the Environment of the Dutch government. Having studied economics at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, he has worked as a politician since the 1970s, first as a Member of Parliament for the Social Democratic Party and then as Minister.

Get in touch with Jan via Email.

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Photo from southern Sudan



Untitled photo from southern Sudan from Sudan Watch archives 2006 (source unknown).