Sudan activist's arrest there protested in Pittsburgh
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The arrest this week of Hawa Abdullah of Sudan from the country's troubled western region of Darfur on charges of alleged "Christianization" of minors at displacement camps has elicited condemnation from Darfur lawyers and a refugee spokesman.
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Though he is a recent immigrant to the United States living in Castle Shannon, Ismail Omar has not stopped keeping track of the trouble in his war-torn homeland, the Darfur region in Sudan.
This week the concerns he and fellow members of the local Sudanese community had about the recent arrest of a Darfur activist in Sudan reached the office of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as they rallied local, state and federal lawmakers for support.
Mr. Omar's involvement began in March, when he asked a friend if he knew someone working in the refugee camps in Darfur who could tell him what it was like now, what problems they were having and how he could help.
He ended up talking by phone in early April to a well-known activist, Hawa Abdullah, for about 15 minutes, and then again the first week in April.
The 26-year-old woman described for him three refugee camps she had worked at there, collectively home to more than 300,000 driven from their homes by the fighting in Sudan over the last 30 years.
"Hawa said in the camps it was terrible," Mr. Omar, 54, said this week, "because the [northern Sudan] government would not let the aid groups in to help."
Mr. Omar hoped to have more conversations with Ms. Abdullah, to find out how he could help, using the Sudanese community here in Pittsburgh and the volunteers at the Pittsburgh Darfur Emergency Coalition.
But two weeks ago a friend gave him a printout from a northern Sudan government-backed website that had a story about Ms. Abdullah, including a picture of her posed with a Bible -- "I know her to be a Muslim woman," Mr. Omar said -- that accused her of converting from Islam to Christianity and trying to spread Christianity in the camps -- a crime punishable by death under Islamic Sharia law.
Ms. Abdullah works for the United Nations/African Union Mission In Darfur peacekeeping force in Darfur at what is known as an internally displaced person camp called Abu Shouk.
First Published May 28, 2011 12:00 am
