Rising crime among women

Sudan News & Views, No. 27, June 1997

A two-day workshop on crime, held in Khartoum, highlighted the increasing crime rate among Sudanese women. According to the director of the federal police, women are involved in drug operations, financial mismanagement, murder, illegal abortions, looting of cattle, as well as being involved in the tribal conflicts and armed robbery in western Sudan. Police records for 1995 show that 1,122 people died as a result of crimes committed by women compared to 900 deaths due to crimes carried out by men.

The increasing resort to the life of crime is mainly due to the authorities lack of concern for women’s rights and the harsh economic conditions, which drove many women to work as street vendors.

Vendors are often harassed by the police and security forces, who carry out regular sweeps to remove them from the streets. Women vendors in the streets of Khartoum now reportedly carry knives, axes and sticks to protect themselves and to use them as weapons against the police.

According to police statistics, there are about 40,000 women who earn their living selling tea on the streets of Khartoum, and if the authorities continue to prevent them from working, they are bound to react violently.

Such violence erupted at the end of June, when police, in a public order crackdown, rounded up more than 2,000 street vendors and homeless children, and held them in the yard of Kober prison in Khartoum. The detainees, who are mostly women and children, rioted and clashed with police using stones and bricks. Others had climbed the wall in an attempt to escape. Police had to use tear gas to break up the riot and contain the situation. The detainees were later transferred to an unused cinema theatre ’until a solution to their problem is worked out’, the authorities said.