Soudan : Loubna Hussein a été libérée
LE TEMPS: La jeune journaliste incarcérée hier pour avoir porté une tenue «indécente», en l’occurrence un pantalon, a été libérée ce mardi. Elle risquait initialement 40 coups de fouet mais a su rallier à la cause des femmes soudanaises nombreux gouvernements et médias étrangers, ainsi que l’ONU.

L’activiste soudanaise Loubna Hussein a finalement été libérée ce mardi, selon l’Union des journalistes soudanais, après avoir été jugée et incarcérée hier. Elle a été condamnée pour port de tenue indécente, en l’occurrence un pantalon, infraction pour laquelle elle risquait initialement 40 coups de fouet. Mme Hussein avait été arrêtée début juillet par la police avec une douzaine d’autres jeunes femmes dans un café de la capitale soudanaise. Hier elle a refusé de payer l’amende de 500 dollars à laquelle elle a finalement été condamnée, d’où son incaracération. C’est l’Union des journalistes soudanais qui a finalement payé la somme. >>> Le Temps avec AFP | Mardi 08 Septembre 2009

Sudanese Journalist Jailed after Refusing to Pay Fine for Wearing Trousers
TIMES ONLINE: A Sudanese woman put on trial for wearing trousers was spared the lash today but still landed in jail after refusing to pay the £130 fine imposed for indecency.

Lubna Hussein, a 34-year-old widow whose trial exposed Sudan’s draconian Islamic laws, was taken to prison in the same trousers she wore when she was arrested with 12 other women at a Khartoum restaurant in July.

“I will not pay a penny, I’d rather go to prison” she declared after hearing the verdict. She was then taken to a women’s jail in Omdurman, across the Nile from Khartoum, the capital, to serve a one month-sentence for refusing to pay the fine.

Aware of worldwide interest in the case, the judge had tried to be lenient. His punishment fell far short of the maximum penalty under the notorious Article 152 of Sudan’s penal code which prescribes 40 lashes and an unlimited fine for women dressed in an indecent or obscene manner in public.

Ten of the other women arrested with her had already pleaded guilty to the charge of indecency and been flogged.

However, unlike thousands of other women arrested in similar circumstance every year, Ms Hussein, a journalist who worked for the United Nations, refused to accept her summary punishment.

She called a lawyer, and even as the court tried to close this embarrassing chapter today by slapping on a fine, she vowed to fight on.

“Lubna has bravely sacrificed her freedom to free other women from the oppression of the law,” said Ahmed Elzobier, one of Ms Hussein’s supporters.

“She is not guilty, but the police the court and the government are the guilty ones.”

“The campaign will continue,” Mr Elzobier added. “Although Lubna is going to prison, the rest of her supporters will keep challenging these laws.” >>> Tristan McConnell | Monday, September 07, 2009

Lubna Hussein Returns to Court over Sundanese ‘Indecency’ Laws
TIMES ONLINE: Sudan is facing international condemnation as the trial resumes today of Lubna Hussein, a Muslim woman who faces a flogging for breaking indecency laws by wearing trousers.

Speaking to The Times before her court appearance, Ms Hussein, 34, a widow, said that she was overwhelmed by the public support she has received in her fight to change a law that she says discriminates against women.

“I am so happy when I see all of the support from around the world,” she said by telephone from the Sudanese capital Khartoum. “It is not support for Lubna Hussein but for human rights and women’s rights in Sudan and elsewhere in the world.”

Ms Hussein wants to force the repeal of Article 152 of Sudan’s penal code, which orders a fine and flogging for women dressed in an “indecent” manner. >>> Tristan McConnell | Monday, September 07, 2009

Lubna Hussein: Justice Deferred
THE GUARDIAN: Lubna Hussein's trial for 'indecent dressing' has been postponed. But whatever the result she has struck a blow for women's rights

The trial of Lubna Hussein was postponed for the second time yesterday. Under the pretext of attempting to determine whether Hussein had truly revoked her immunity from prosecution when she resigned from her UN position, the authorities have bought more time to find a face-saving resolution to the debacle. This is looking more and more unlikely as Hussein's campaign gathers momentum both at home and abroad.

Initially, she was viewed as something of a loose cannon in Khartoum. So many before her had suffered the pot luck fate of flogging and retreated to lick their wounds in private for fear of attracting more shame and indignity. In a naturally demure and modest society, any suggestion of inappropriate behaviour leaves a woman with no option but to try and minimise the damage to her reputation and quell the "no smoke without fire" whispers.

But now that spell has been broken. Around 50 female protesters braved tear gas and baton beatings from police outside court yesterday, tying their fate to Lubna's. An ancillary case is brewing as another journalist faces an exorbitant fine for criticising the government's handling of the case. By breaking through the self-imposed barrier of fear of what others would think, Lubna has stripped her punishment of all its power and turned the tables spectacularly. If ultimately she is flogged her "martyrdom" will be complete – if she is found innocent the government will be humiliated and public order laws made a mockery of. >>> Nesrine Malik | Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Protests at Sudan Woman's Trial
BBC: Police have fired tear gas at supporters of a Sudanese woman charged with wearing "indecent clothing" shortly before her trial was postponed.

The trial in the capital Khartoum was delayed for a month.

Under Khartoum's Sharia law, Lubna Ahmed Hussein could face up to 40 lashes in public if convicted.

Earlier, she told the BBC she was not afraid to be flogged publicly, saying: "Flogging is not pain, flogging is an insult to humans, women and religions."

She says she was wearing trousers when arrested and has resigned from a UN job that would have given her immunity to take on the case.

"If the court's decision is that I be flogged, I want this flogging in public," she told the BBC's Today programme.

She says she has invited 500 people to attend the hearing. >>> | Tuesday, August 04, 2009

From the Today programme

Lubna Hussein: 'I'm Not Afraid of Being Flogged. It Doesn't Hurt. But It Is Insulting'
THE OBSERVER: Lubna Hussein could receive 40 lashes if found guilty on Tuesday of being indecently dressed - by wearing trousers. In her first major interview, she tells James Copnall in Khartoum why she is determined to fight on, whatever danger she faces

Sitting in the restaurant where her ordeal began, Lubna Hussein looks at the offending item of clothing that caused all the trouble and laughs softly. "In Sudan, women who wear trousers must be flogged!" she says, her eyes widening at the thought. The former journalist faces up to 40 lashes and an unlimited fine if she is convicted of breaching Article 152 of Sudanese criminal law, which prohibits dressing indecently in public.

What exactly constitutes "indecent" is not clear. Last month Lubna was among a crowd listening to an Egyptian singer in a restaurant in a swish area of Khartoum when policemen surged in. They ordered Lubna and other women to stand up to check what they were wearing, and arrested all those who had trousers on. Lubna, who was wearing loose green slacks and a floral headscarf, was taken to the police station.

"There were 13 of us, and the only thing we had in common was that we were wearing trousers," Lubna says. "Ten of the 13 women said they were guilty, and they got 10 lashes and a fine of 250 Sudanese pounds (about £65). One girl was only 13 or 14. She was so scared she urinated on herself."

Lubna asked for a lawyer, so her case was delayed. Despite the risks, she is determined that her trial should go ahead. Before her initial hearing last Wednesday, she had 500 invitation cards printed, and sent out emails with the subject line: "Sudanese journalist Lubna invites you again to her flogging tomorrow."

The court was flooded with women's rights activists, politicians, diplomats and journalists, as well as well-wishers. During the hearing, Lubna announced that she would resign from her job as a public information officer with the United Nations, which would have provided her with immunity, to fight the case. The judge agreed, and adjourned the trial until Tuesday.

Lubna says she has no fear of the punishment she might face. "Afraid of what? No, I am not afraid, really," she insists. "I think that flogging does not hurt, but it is an insult. Not for me, but for women, for human beings, and also for the government of Sudan. How can you tell the world that the government flogs the people? How can you do that?"

She is determined to face prosecution in order to change the law. "It is not for me. It is my chance to defend the women of Sudan. Women are often arrested and flogged because of what they wear. This has been happening for 20 years. Afterwards some of them don't continue at high school or university, sometimes they don't return to their family, and sometimes if the girls have a future husband, perhaps the relationship comes to an end." >>> James Copnall | Sunday, August 02, 2009

Heroine: Lubna Hussein
THE TELEGRAPH: Lubna Hussein, the Sudanese woman who is daring Islamic judges to have her whipped for the "crime" of wearing trousers, has given a defiant interview to the Telegraph.

In court on Tuesday Mrs Hussein will dare judges to have her flogged. Photo: The Telegraph
As the morality police crowded around her table in a Khartoum restaurant, leering at her to see what she was wearing, Lubna Hussein had no idea she was about to become the best-known woman in Sudan.

She had arrived at the Kawkab Elsharq Hall on a Friday night to book a cousin's wedding party, and while she waited she watched an Egyptian singer and sipped a coke.

She left less than an hour later under arrest as a "trouser girl" - humiliated in front of hundreds of people, then beaten around the head in a police van before being hauled before a court to face a likely sentence of 40 lashes for the "sin" of not wearing traditional Islamic dress.

The officials who tried to humiliate her expected her to beg for mercy, as most of their victims do.

Instead she turned the tables on them – and in court on Tuesday Mrs Hussein will dare judges to have her flogged, as she makes a brave stand for women's rights in one of Africa's most conservative nations.

She has become an overnight heroine for thousands of women in Africa and the Middle East, who are flooding her inbox with supportive emails.

To the men who feel threatened by her she is an enemy of public morals, to be denounced in the letters pages of newspapers and in mosques.

As she recounted her ordeal in Khartoum yesterday Mrs Hussein, a widow in her late thirties who works as a journalist and United Nations' press officer, managed cheerfully to crack jokes - despite the real prospect that in a couple of days she will be flogged with a camel-hair whip in a public courtyard where anyone who chooses may watch the spectacle. 'Whip me if you dare' says Lubna Hussein, Sudan's defiant trouser woman >>> Talal Osman in Khartoum and Nick Meo | Saturday, August 01, 2009

THE GUARDIAN: In Praise of… Lubna Hussein

It is so much easier to demand change from the outside than to challenge convention from within. Lubna Hussein was among a group of 13 Sudanese women arrested in a popular cafe in Khartoum for wearing trousers. All but three were flogged two days later, but Ms Hussein decided to have her day in court. She refused a plea bargain that would have limited her punishment to 10 lashes, and resigned from her job as a journalist working for the UN mission in Sudan, which would otherwise have granted her immunity from prosecution. She did so knowing that if she lost her case the penalty could be 40 lashes. She makes her stand not merely over the right for women to wear trousers or as a protest against a punishment she regards as an act of humiliation. She wants to annul the article of Sudanese law that addresses women's dress code under the title of indecent acts. Sudan's interpretation of Islamic law, she argues, is not just unconstitutional but un-Islamic. Sharia law is imperfectly enforced in Sudan, especially in its increasingly affluent and cosmopolitan capital. It is, however, used to crack the whip, making Islam a proxy for the regime's authoritarianism. The government may well be embarrassed by Ms Hussein's trial, as much as it is annoyed by her status as a cause celebre. Ms Hussein may not win her case, but in defeat she could prove stronger than in victory. Her example should be a spur to independent-minded women wherever they are in the world. [Source: The Guardian] | Friday, July 31, 2009

Woman in Sudan Faces Flogging for Wearing Trousers
THE TELEGRAPH: A Sudanese woman journalist is preparing to be flogged 40 times in Khartoum for wearing trousers, with 10 women already whipped for similar offences against Islamic law.

Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein. Photo: The Telegraph
Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein, who writes for the left-wing Al-Sahafa newspaper and works for the media department of the United Nations Mission in Sudan, was arrested in Khartoum earlier this month after being caught wearing "indecent" clothes.

"I received a telephone call from the authorities saying I must appear at 10 am (7am GMT) on Wednesday in front of the judge," Hussein said.

"It is important that people know what is happening," Hussein said in an invitation to journalists to attend her court appearance and flogging.

"They will lash me 40 times, and also fine me 250 Sudanese pounds (100 dollars)."

Hussein said she was at a restaurant on July 3 when police came in and ordered 13 women wearing trousers to follow them to the police station. >>> | Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Related:
Sudan Women ‘Lashed for Trousers’ >>> BBC | July 13, 2009