Sailing with a Shovel

By Mohamed Al Halengy, RAPAR Leader since 2011
 
That time, 2006, when I arrived in the UK and my asylum case was refused, that time was so difficult to stand: first to support my self and support people at the same time and then to cope with being moved from one city to another city.
 
I started working us volunteer with different human right organizations when I was in Liverpool, and after when I came to Manchester, but some things are really real for me, it really does mean a lot. 
 
I can’t forget the first time inside RAPAR office, in 2011, and the first words to me: “we do not go fishing for you, but we teach you how to fish…” Those words and that work, it changed inside me, a lot.  RAPAR:  The door is opening always and it is the best place for all young people, and older people too.  There we learn: to accept yourself, and be your own best friend, wrapping your own arms all around you.  Since that time until recently, until right now am with RAPAR and proud of all the learning and inner confidence, making our own decisions, recognising and manage dependence, having our own values, deciding who we want to be, and how we want to get there, that is the Gift for me from RAPAR.
 
Since then I started attending meetings and many different activities were offered. I learned to organize myself and others into meetings.  I have organised meetings and demonstrations on the largest level in the UK and now I write, in response to the death of a 16 year old boy from Sudan who has drowned this last weekend, trying to reach Britain.
 
When Omar al-Bashir became president of the National Congress Party and Sudan on  30th June 1989, he seized power and began institutionalizing Sharia Law at the time when Sudan was in the midst of a civil war.  That war continued, with that tyrannical ruler for 30 years.  After the removal of that regime, the dirty hands that destroyed Sudan before are still involved in the destruction and sabotage of the economy, the poverty of the market and the large number of diseases, unemployed youths and deterioration: economic deterioration to such an extent that the mind cannot believe it.  The economic infrastructure has been completely destroyed, and the Islamists of the National Congress party are behind all the destruction that occurs in Sudan.
 
I assert that, on top of them, the hand of the destroyer is Kabashi who is at the Head of the State, and also there are three countries that participate in sabotaging the economy, namely the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt
 
Cultural circles in Sudan were traumatized by the death last week of the young Sudanese poet, Abdel-Wahab Mohamed Youssef, known as “Latinos”, who drowned in the Mediterranean, after the sinking of a boat that was carrying him with others on their way to Europe.

And now this, a sixteen year old boy from Sudan, trying to reach Britain, sailing with a shovel.

It has to stop.  

​Link to Arabic film >>>