Sudanese police fired tear gas and beat women protesting outside a Sudanese court during the trial of a female journalist accused of violating the Islamic dress code by wearing trousers in public, 2009. Press Association/ And Raouf. All rights reserved.It was July 2012 and I was standing with an acquaintance inside the Haj Yousif court-house as we were waiting to attend the trial of several activists. The acquaintance, a young woman, had just been released from detention by the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) and was telling me her story. As I took mental notes, I kept thinking of my best friend who was asked during an NISS interrogation if she was a lesbian. This was because they had seen pictures of us together on a boat on my birthday.
In 2012 and 2013, as a wave of mass protests swept Sudan, a number of tweeps confirmed that pornography websites, which were normally blocked by the National Telecommunications Council (NTC), had been unblocked. Pornography was a tool the NTC started to use to control the masses. It was as if they were saying: stay home and get off, but don't go out and protest!
Over the past few years, one of the tools used to suppress women activists has been the threat of their images being pornographized. But it seems that this tactic has reached a whole new level.
