Fadwa Al-Khazraji, a Sudanese journalist and human rights activist, recalls the day she received a call from an international number asking her where she lived. They did not wait for an answer. She still lives in fear of the threats the caller made and his warning that he would come and find her.

This call came after Al-Khazraji had published an investigative report documenting the rape of women and girls in Darfur. That was four months after war broke out in Sudan on April 15, 2023. 

Despite the intimidation she faced, Al-Khazraji continued to cover news of the war in Sudan, which brought her more threats.

On the morning of April 15, 2023, fighting broke out in the capital, Khartoum, between the Sudanese Armed Forces, under the command of Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as “Hemedti.” At least 56 people were killed on that first day, according to the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors. Media reports later charted the spread of the war to other regions, including Northern State, North Kordofan, South Kordofan, Darfur, Blue Nile, Gedaref, and Gezira. 

From the start of the war, Al-Khazraji focused on covering humanitarian stories and showing things as they really were, which attracted more online threats and bullying. On February 22, 2024, social media accounts carried photos of Al-Khazraji accompanied by insults, after she had reported on the deteriorating conditions in South Kordofan, which was under siege by the army, the RSF, and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North.

She reported a story of a man who, driven by hunger, bartered his 15-year-old daughter for some flour.

Al-Khazraji says such intimidation was nothing new to her, and that she had faced attempted kidnappings and serious threats before the war began. “They don’t want their abuses exposed,” she says.

Another journalist, Samar Suleiman, had similar experiences to Al-Khazraji. When the first ceasefire in Sudan came into effect on April 18, 2023, Suleiman left Khartoum for Kassala, which is over 480 kilometres from the capital. From there, she wrote several stories on the abuses Sudanese women were facing during the war and helped out in local shelters giving aid to displaced people.

Suleiman said she received threats on the Messenger app, including one, she says,  from a former minister. She was also offered money to post news items on her Facebook page. When she refused, people threatened to come look for her.

Blacklists 

Suleiman said these threats made her and her family anxious. “My family feared for my safety, and I would only go out of the house with either my sister or a friend,” she says.

Before long, Suleiman became a target on social media, where she was accused of being part of a “sleeper cell” working secretly for the RSF. 

The names of both male and female journalists, including hers, have also appeared on so-called “shame and disgrace” blacklists. These carry the names of activists, journalists, and politicians accused of being affiliated with the RSF. Journalist Sara Taj Al-Sir says her name appeared on one of these lists, and she also faced criticism, alongside many colleagues, for meeting a U.S. envoy, especially after the envoy posted a photo of himself with the journalists on his official page.

According to the Sudanese Journalists Syndicate (SJS), anonymous lists have appeared, identifying journalists supposedly working for one of the two sides in the conflict. The SJS points out how dangerous such lists are, as those whose names appear are at risk of assassination once the fighting ends.

During the first year of the war, the SJS documented 393 cases of attacks on journalists. These included murder, forced disappearance, detention, shootings, beatings, theft of property, travel bans, attacks on homes and intimidation. These journalists included:

Iman Fadl, Secretary of Freedoms at the SJS, says that the primary abuse journalists face is being forced to conceal their identity as journalists from both sides, because “they both see a journalist as a criminal.”

Fadel explains that the SJS monitors and documents abuses, puts out statements, and sends reports to human rights organisations and international bodies. The union also provides support in these cases, though she noted the difficulty of taking legal action because of the war.

In April 2024, Samar Suleiman filed a complaint with the prosecutor’s office after she had received multiple threats and was targeted in a social media smear campaign. The prosecutor’s office registered seven reports. Military intelligence units in Kassala then tried to arrest her, based on an order bearing her photo. The SJS issued a statement in her support, while  social media was flooded with expressions of solidarity. 

Fadwa Al-Khazraji, on the other hand, says that the SJS documented the threats she faced, but could not take any concrete action. Al-Khazraji does not blame the union, acknowledging that it is “a body made up of journalists who are themselves at risk of the same abuses as the ones they document,” as she put it.

Stopping Coverage

In 2023, research by Women in Journalism and Reach, involving 403 female journalists and media workers, found that around half of respondents were promoting their work less on the internet, because of online threats. And about a third of participants said that threats of online harm had caused them to think seriously about quitting journalism altogether.

These findings are consistent with the results of a study conducted by UNESCO, and the International Center for Journalists, published in 2021, entitled “Global Trends in Online Violence Against Women Journalists.” The study, involving around 900 female journalists, showed that online violence affected their work and productivity. Thirty-eight per cent of those surveyed said they had cut back their social media presence as a result of online threats, which had prompted 4% of the sample to leave their jobs altogether. 

The war has naturally caused many media organisations in Sudan to stop operating, but the smear campaigns and threats female journalists faced have also led some of them to stop writing.

Being threatened was nothing new for photojournalist Inaam Ahmaday. She says her home was raided six times by the RSF, who verbally abused her and tried to assault her. Her brothers and male relatives were also harmed, all because she had documented abuses committed by parties in the conflict.

Ahmaday says she still receives threatening calls from unknown numbers, mostly from neighbouring countries. She either blocks them or simply does not answer.

Both Samar Suleiman and Fadwa Al-Khazraji managed to leave Sudan and are now looking for ways to continue their journalistic work. 

On  July 4, 2024, Inaam Ahmeday was detained and questioned after her coverage of  the conditions of refugees from Sennar and Singa. Ahmeday says that military intelligence deleted all her photos and recordings before letting her go. She has not been back to work since.