How social media has become a lifeline for Sudanese

2023-04-22 18:35:53

On Twitter, Facebook or Telegram, the telephone numbers run at the same time as the gunpowder in Khartoum. Given the forced paralysis of humanitarian agencies due to armed clashes, Sudanese have had to take to social media to ask for safe places to flee and even to know where food is sold.

“People now prefer to use social networks because it is easy to know safe and dangerous places, as well as to look for food and health aid”One of the organizers of the Khartoum resistance committee, Ozman al-Yamri, told EFE by telephone, stating that “he does not have the support of any international organization or NGO.”

Sudan has a black record with the connectivity to Internet, since it has come to interrupt access throughout the country -which has lasted weeks- when an event has occurred that has changed the course of the country, such as the violent eviction of 2019 to request a civil transition and during the coup d’état 2021 military.

But in this conflict between military rivals, which began on the 15th and has already left more than 400 dead, this has not been the case. A completely different scenario in the African country where Internet access has given them that necessary lifeline. to continue resisting one of the worst crises in the recent history of the African country.

Bombed 13 hospitals in Sudan since the start of the conflict a week ago.

Guide in evacuation

Al Yamri clarifies that the resistance committee – an informal neighborhood network created in 2013 and which became the most important during the 2019 protests that overthrew former dictator Omar al Bashir – It does not evacuate the citizens of the capital, but it does dedicate itself to finding the safest routes and far from the clashes between the Sudanese Army and the powerful Paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (FAR).

“We have not evacuated civilians, but as human beings we guide citizens to safe ways out of the capital“, Al-Jamri points out.

And how do they do it? The Sudanese points out that they contact “civilians through social networks” and share “the information with aid groups in residential neighborhoods to obtain the data” contrasted.

It’s all through volunteersremember, as is the case of the also Sudanese Merghani Salah.

“I have participated because it is our role and duty to help people and surely if we were in their place, we would need people to help us,” Salah, an active volunteer on social networks who offers accommodation even in expatriate groups in Khartoum. He lives north of the capital in a relatively calm area.

He doesn’t know exactly if there are NGOs now offering help to those who have been stuck or not, but it asserts that “there are efforts by the residents of the state of Gezira and North Khartoum to evacuate and shelter the citizens trapped under the sound of gunfire.”

Reaffirms that “all” this work is being done “through social media.”

Nonetheless, numerous humanitarian agencies, including the UN, have suspended their operations due to the volatility and violence of the conflictwhile those that continue to operate are doing so in a very limited way, as possible according to the intense fighting.

Columns of smoke in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, during clashes between the Army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

a life saver

Photos of the missing, missing supplies and even medicines are broadcast on Twitter, while Sudanese and other users open their direct message box to be contacted.

The help phone numbers are the ones that are most around the thread of these applications, as can also be seen on Telegram, where groups have been created to ask for safe routes, even to find out how to get to Egypt, as EFE saw.

“Internet outages in Sudan have been on the rise since the outbreak of the conflict, although they are mainly attributed to power outages and difficulties supplying fuel to standby generators. Although the providers were ordered to interrupt the service, for the most part they have not complied,” Isik Mater, Research Director of NetBlocks, a London-based portal that controls Internet censorship, told EFE.

But in this conflict “great effort has been made to maintain connectivity, even despite security issuessaid Mater, who has watched as “evacuations are being organized online.”

“Without a doubt, the availability of the Internet is saving lives,” rivet.