A woman journalist convicted of public indecency for wearing trousers outdoors was freed Tuesday, despite her own desire to serve a month in prison as protest against Sudan's draconian morality laws, the Associated Press (AP) has reported.
The judge who convicted Lubna Hussein had imposed a $200 fine as her sentence, avoiding the maximum sentence of 40 lashes in an apparent attempt to put an end to a case that had raised international criticism of Sudan. But Hussein refused to pay the fine, which would have meant a month's imprisonment.
Some details from the AP report: [Link]
She told the Associated Press that she was freed Tuesday after the fine was paid without her knowledge by the Journalist Union, which is headed by a member of the ruling party. "I had no choice. All my friends knew I didn't want to pay the fine," Hussein said, speaking by phone from Khartoum. "I had chosen prison, and not to pay the fine in solidarity with hundreds of other women jailed" under this law.
Hussein said she suspects that the authorities don't want her to spend any time in the prison in Omdurman, on the outskirts of Khartoum, where she said at least 800 women are serving time, many of them convicted under the indecency law. "I wanted to make reports from inside the prison. Maybe they were unnerved by my presence in prison," she said.
Fayez Selik, the editor in chief of the pro-south newspaper Ajras al-Hurriya, or Freedom Bells, said the government freed Hussein to end their "predicament."
Mohieddin Titawi, the head of the Journalist Union, said he paid the fine out of duty toward a member of the union. "I didn't get permission from the government or from Lubna," he said from Khartoum. "I know my duty very well and I intervened to get a journalist out of prison."
Ever since her arrest in July, the 43-year-old Hussein has used her case to draw attention to Sudan's indecency law, which allows flogging as a punishment for any acts or clothing that is seen as offending morals. Human rights campaigners say the law is vague, that its enforcement is arbitrary and that southern Sudanese in the capital — who are mostly Christians — are often targeted.
