The Daily Telegraph

Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim

Campaigner who fought for justice for women in Sudan

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FATIMA AHMED IBRAHIM, who has died aged 88, was the first female politician in Sudan, a leading light in the Sudanese Communist Party and a champion of women’s rights in her homeland.

She was born in December 1928 in the Sudanese city of Omdurman, the daughter of Ahmed Ibrahim, a teacher and imam, and his wife Aisha Mohamed Ahmed Fadl. Although Fatima’s father was traditiona­l and religious, her mother was highly educated – which was unusual for those days – and she insisted that her children were protected from her husband’s preoccupat­ion with religious ritual.

All three of their children later became communists and from an early age Fatima had a strong sense of the injustices faced by women in her country. At home she refused to do domestic work unless her brothers did it too, and while she was a pupil at Omdurman secondary school she led a strike in protest against the cancellati­on of science classes for girls.

Despite having won a place at the University of Khartoum, she was told by her father that she could not take it up, so she became a teacher, and in 1947 joined the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP), which was, at the time, the only political party that allowed women members. That same year she founded the Intellectu­al Women’s Associatio­n and in 1952 co-founded the Sudanese Women’s Union (SWU), with whom she worked to establish political and legislativ­e rights as well as education and equal pay for women.

In 1955 she became editor-in-chief of the magazine Sawat al-maraa (“Woman’s Voice”), which played a key role in the resistance to President Ibrahim Abboud’s military rule. Abboud was overthrown in the October Revolution of 1964, after which women were allowed to be nominated as candidates in parliament­ary elections.

In 1965 Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim was elected to the Sudanese parliament, and in 1969, when Jaafar Nemeiri seized power in a military coup backed by the SCP, the Women’s Union was given more influence and power, which subsequent­ly led to the abolition of further oppressive laws, including that which obliged abused wives to return to their husbands.

Also in 1969 Fatima Ibrahim married the trade unionist Alshafie Ahmed Alshiekh, but two years later Nimeiri fell out with the SCP and executed several of the party’s leading members, including Fatima’s husband, who was hanged. Fatima herself subsequent­ly spent a number of years either under house arrest or in jail, where, with typical solidarity, she befriended many of her fellow prisoners, most of whom were either prostitute­s or purveyors of illegal liquor.

Even when under house arrest her spirit was undaunted. On one occasion she was housed in a building next to a club in Khartoum where Nimeiri was giving a speech and she climbed over the wall and loudly denounced him and his supporters before being dragged away by his guards.

Although Nimeiri was overthrown in 1985, in 1990 she left Sudan after Omar Hassan al-bashir’s Islamic military coup. She moved to Britain, where she set up a London branch of the SWU, returning to Sudan in 2005. She retired from political life in 2007.

In 1993 Fatima Ibrahim was given a UN award for outstandin­g achievemen­ts in the field of human rights, and in 2006 she received the Ibn Rushd prize for freedom of thought.

Highly principled and politicall­y fearless, she was, neverthele­ss, proud of her heritage and always chose to wear the traditiona­l Sudanese toub, a long garment with loose head cover, similar to a sari.

She is survived by her son, Mohammed Ahmed, a doctor who lives and works in Britain.

Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim, born December 1928, died August 12 2017

 ??  ?? She spent several years in jail or under house arrest
She spent several years in jail or under house arrest

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