Tag: Sudanese in America

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U.S. Supreme Court Backs Sudan Over American Sailors In USS Cole Bombing Case

By Andrew Chung

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday prevented American sailors injured in the deadly 2000 al Qaeda bombing of the Navy destroyer USS Cole from collecting $314.7 million in damages from the government of Sudan for its alleged role in the attack.

In a 8-1 ruling, the justices overturned a lower court’s decision that had allowed the sailors to collect the damages from certain banks that held Sudanese assets.

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Music

The Queens Rapper Connecting American Hip-Hop to African Audiences
Bas, raised in New York, wants to bring his music to his Sudanese parents’ homeland and to the broader continent. And so do his fans.
By Hannah Giorgis

It all started one night in Lagos, Nigeria. The first time that Bas, the Queens-bred rapper signed to J. Cole’s Dreamville label, performed in front of an African audience was surreal. He’d accompanied Cole on tour following the release of KOD, the North Carolina rapper’s 2018 album.

Bas, the son of two Sudanese immigrants, had gone to Nigeria just to kick it with his labelmate and longtime friend from Fayetteville.
But when Cole asked him to come perform a few songs, Bas planned to play two from his March 2016 album, Too High to Riot.

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Politics

How Sudan’s uprising is inspiring a generation of Sudanese American teens

By Hana Baba

Nearly two dozen people are gathered for a symposium in Hayward, California, about the recent protests in Sudan. Those who come to these Sudan-related events are usually adults — first-generation Sudanese immigrants to the United States.

But it’s different tonight. The featured speakers are Sudanese American teenagers.

First up is 17-year-old Maazin Ahmed, whose mother is Sudanese and father is African American. Maazin is the president of his college’s Black Students Union in Berkeley, California, a city familiar with protests. He says he grew up seeing pictures of his mom sporting an afro in the 70s in Sudan. She told him stories about better times in her home country.

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U.S. congress delegation visits Sudan as demonstration against Bashir increases

A U.S. congress delegation is visiting Sudan to meet with government officials and opposition leaders, ahead of the start of a second phase of dialogue between the two countries.

Sudanese lawmaker Mutwakil Ahmed said in a statement the U.S. delegation, led by Rep. Gus M. Bilirakis, a Republican from Florida, met with Salah Gosh, the head of Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services and other officials on Saturday.

A report by the state-run SUNA news service said Gosh told the delegation about “the positive results of the President Al-Bashir recent decisions to maintain the country’s national security and cohesion.”

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African Politics

Sudanese American Physicians Association Call for Swift Action Against Sudan Regime

Sudanese American Physicians Association (SAPA) are calling for swift action against Sudan regime. They made this call on February 25, 2019 in a statement released to the media.

The association said for the ninth week in a row, Sudanese citizens have taken to the streets to peacefully protest the brutality and corruption of the dictatorial regime of Omer al-Bashir and seek freedom and justice under a new and democratically elected Sudanese government. al-Bashir has met these protests with unrestrained violence, including using live ammunition against defenseless and peaceful gatherings, breaking into homes and hospitals to assault and kill pro-democracy activists, and arresting political opponents on a massive scale.

Despite increasing international outcry, al-Bashir and the head of his security apparatus continue to threaten more bloodshed as protests continue to demand justice and an end to more than 30 years of tyrannical exploitation of the Sudanese people. Per Human Rights Watch 1, the death toll of innocent demonstrators has reached at least 51, a figure that does not include thousands more who have been assaulted or unjustly detained by the security forces.

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Culture

Interviews form basis of new play about the legacy of Sudan in Iowa City

On Friday, Feb. 15 from 4:30-6 p.m. in the Senate Chambers of the Old Capital Museum, the African Studies Program and the Office of Outreach and Engagement at the University of Iowa presented My Daughters Are My Writings, a new play based on oral histories of seven Iowa City residents from Sudan compiled by two UI graduate students, followed by a talk by Steve Howard, a scholar visiting from Ohio University (Athens), about Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, a Sudanese Muslim social reformer whose work initiated the Republican Brotherhood before and after Sudan’s independence from Britain.

The play is a truly interdisciplinary affair: Written by UI alum Margot Connolly, based on excerpts from Howard’s book and interviews by graduate students from the history department, it is directed by UI theater graduate student Britny Horton, who acts in the play alongside three fellow graduate students.

Taha is best known for the Second Message of Islam, which distinguishes the verses in the Koran revealed in Medina (the basis of Sharia law) from those initially revealed in Mecca. The latter, from Taha’s perspective, would provide the basis of an ideal religion based on freedom and equality — including the equality of men and women.

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American Odessey

It isn’t easy migrating to America. Three refugees’ stories

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky — Sudanese refugee Kuol Deng sits in his Louisville apartment next to a stack of old black and white Western films that his daughter and son will watch from South Sudan using FaceTime.

It has been more than three years since Kuol has seen his kids in person. They often ask him when they will get to come to America — a difficult question to which he doesn’t know the answer.

On the other side of town, fellow Sudanese refugee Rizik Lado sits outside his apartment tightening his shoes in preparation for a run. This time, the run is for leisure, but he can still remember running while bullets whizzed past his body as he fled his village in South Sudan.

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Politics

Sudanese-American elected into council in Virginia

The number of Sudanese-Americans holding elected public office in the United States has doubled – there are now two. Mohamed Seifeldein won a city council seat on November 6 in Alexandria, Virginia, a suburb of the capital, Washington. He follows in the footsteps of Mazahir Salih, who was elected to a city council seat in Iowa City, Iowa in 2017. according to this report by John Tanza of the VOA Continue reading “Sudanese-American elected into council in Virginia” →