These young people, denied even the most basic opportunity to live by an authoritarian regime, choose — without hesitation — to gamble the last thing they possess: their lives.
When someone falls victim to media disinformation or the fantasy of a better world in their dreamland — Europe — which itself is a product of the global authoritarian system, perhaps awareness campaigns about the dangers of irregular migration can offer some solution.
But when a person knowingly and consciously chooses to undertake the risks of the journey and endure the suffering it brings — that is the true essence of the Sudanese crisis.
Among university students and graduates, we find comrades who have seen the world close its doors in their faces. In a country that crushes the dreams and hopes of its youth, some make the decision to attempt escape, traversing unimaginable distances across land and sea with zero means. This is what we call the fight for survival.
I’ve always been struck by the image of wild buffalo herds crossing the Nile in an effort to escape slow, certain death from drought — in search of food, and perhaps safety. Thousands of buffalo die along the way, their bodies piling up, and the rest trample over or through them — some fall, some survive.
It is heartbreaking and deeply disturbing that, in the twenty-first century, we are witnessing an equalization between Sudanese youth and wild buffalo: thousands of young people drown in the sea, get lost in the desert, or are hunted down by states and international authorities in the same way predators hunt vulnerable prey.
The state preys on Sudanese youth to feed off their desperation.
From an anarchist perspective, we try to raise awareness about the issues of media manipulation and propaganda — but we cannot stop people from fleeing a life that feels like a chronic death sentence. A life that haunts you every hour, constantly reminding you that there are infinite ways your misery can end in tragedy at any moment.
What can be offered is resistance as a way of life.
Resistance to uproot the predator that is chasing our youth. The anarchist choice of resistance is one of the most vital paths we seek to cultivate:
Resistance to poverty,Resistance to death,
Resistance to backwardness,
Resistance to ignorance,
Resistance to racism,
Resistance to sexual repression,
Resistance to authority — as a free way of living.
I don’t want to mention numbers, stories, or names of those who perished in the desert sands, or were eaten by fish and swallowed by the waves — those who moved from studying in a deadly environment to sleeping rough in European forests under the rain.
They taste what humanitarian aid can offer — at the cost of their dignity trampled beneath their feet — in exchange for a meal, a sleeping bag, or a box of medicine, to forget — even for a moment — the cruelty of this world reflected in their eyes.
Eyes drowning in the struggle for one thing:
Survival. Only survival.
Anarchist Group in Sudan
This text is excerpted from issue number seven of Al-Amal (Hope), the newsletter of the Sudanese Anarchist Collective, co-published by CNT-AIT France in collaboration with Tunisian anarchists.
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Source: CNT-AIT France