The filmmaker Hajooj Kuka, alongside four colleagues, has been released from jail in Sudan.
As previously reported in September they had been imprisoned for two months on public nuisance charges. They say their detention was politically motivated.
Kuka, alongside Duaa Ahmed, Abdel Hamdan, Ayman Ahmed and Ahmed Hammad, was first arrested on 10 August at the Civic Lab cultural centre in the Al-Zuhour neighbourhood in Khartoum where they, with other artists, actors and activists were rehearsing a performance work. Authorities claim they were acting on noise complaints. However Kuka says he and colleagues were attacked with sticks and stones by ‘Islamist instigators’, angry over the political nature of the play, and that police failed to intervene when they were assaulted. It was claimed that Duaa Ahmed, who is the manager of the centre, was slapped unconscious by a police officer when she told him not to take pictures of her on his personal phone.
While longtime Sudanese autocrat Omar al-Bashir was toppled in April last year after months of protests, the judiciary system in the country is yet to be reformed.
‘The big thing that we hope will come through this also is getting rid of all these rules that could be used against us, and also, finding ways to protect first art and artists,’ Kuka told Vice on his release. ‘Right now, the remainders of the old regime still use these laws that exist, and [there are] folks within the police, the judiciary, the prosecution office, that still believe in the old ways.’
Kuka, best known for his documentary Beats of the Antonov (2014) and comedic film aKasha (2018) and who was admitted to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences earlier this year, has long been a critic of the previous regime as a member of Girifna, a non-violent resistance movement in Sudan. The name translates as ‘we are fed up’ in Arabic.
