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[4/4] "I have thousands of activists whose stories have touched me. For example, our very own Majid Maali from Sudan who was part of the group that filed the case in the ICC against former dictator Omar Bashir, was captured tortured and beaten. He escaped and went through South Sudan, then came to Uganda as a young man. We took care of him, equipped him with skills and he’s now part of our staff. He has lived here in Uganda for 14 years. It was in April this year when he decided to go back to Sudan and establish our offices there and also continue with the work he has been doing. Unfortunately, the war broke out days after he arrived in Sudan but he insists on continuing to work there. Isn’t that inspiring?." (Nsambya, Kampala)
[3/4] When I left Somalia I went to Kenya where I realised at the time that protection mechanisms and recognition of human rights defenders were not in place or hadn’t been established. It was very risky for me there as well. I had to seek out better protection and that’s how I ended up in Canada. While there I wondered why my friends and colleagues from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Kenya, and Sudan were not being protected. They were part of the struggle to get recognition. “What can you do as an individual, how can you bridge that gap?” That’s the question I asked myself. I arrived on Friday in Canada and on Monday I had a desk at Amnesty International's Toronto office doing voluntary work on refugee matters and conceptualising an idea on how and where the protection of human rights activists could take place on the continent. A group which I was part of who found themselves in Canada was also asking themselves why we were not in our sub regions. If we failed to get protection from our home countries, why couldn’t we continue with the same work closer to home? That’s the fire that started DefendDefenders. We refused to accept that human rights activists should be left vulnerable and isolated. We wanted them to be dignified and equipped with tools of survival and relaunched. Protection mechanism for human rights activists is not a cup of tea. But we continue to fight until we get to a time when we have peace, and respect for human rights prevails. (Nsambya, Kampala)
[2/4] In 2001 I was forced to leave my home country by warlords and religious fundamentalists deploying violence on anyone that did not agree with their point of view. I have been targeted several times; one night we were sleeping and I narrowly escaped when the house was directly shelled. Another time we were at a checkpoint and the militia manning it was specifically asking “Where’s Hassan?” to the three occupants of the car ahead of us. They told them “None of us is Hassan, Hassan’s photo is everywhere. Do we look like Hassan?” The whole time I was seated in the car behind them. Our car was a scrap of metal on wheels, it had no door handles, nothing and I was in there disguised. I was wearing my nomadic clothes and a stick, looking dirty. Luckily I crossed the checkpoint unnoticed. When I got to the plane, there were no seats left but I eventually got a place to sit close to the cockpit and then that’s when I started to speak in English- the pilot was shocked. When we were airborne, I introduced myself as Hassan Shire and he said, “You made it. No one can recognise you. (Nsambya, Kampala)
[1/4] My journey and passion for human rights started when I was very young, staying at my uncle’s place. My mentor Dr Ishmail Juma’le was the only human rights lawyer in Somalia at the time, defending prisoners of conscience in court. He was himself, a prisoner of conscience three times but that never stopped him from continuing with his activism and defending the political detainees of the dictatorship regime at the time. I grew up in that kind of atmosphere and I despised the dictatorship. I should say I was lucky to be part of a movement where the consciousness of liberty and freedom was very much alive and has never been broken. My activism started there, thinking about what my mentor was doing and why he was doing it. I remember soldiers would come and raid his home in the middle of the night, we’d hear dogs barking. That’s how we always knew they had come for him. He was always ready, he had his small bag packed. And whenever he got arrested, he encouraged us to be strong. I started emulating his character. I was in high school at the time, and I was a conscious student leader wanting democracy, the rule of law and the protection of human rights. My academic performance was excellent, I used to inspire many students including the children of the military junta. They became aware that what their parents were doing was not necessarily right. We used to hold debates at all levels and from that time onwards I’ve never stopped being an activist. I co-founded the only human rights organisation in Somalia called Dr Ishmail Juma’le Human Rights Centre which is named after my late uncle. (Nsambya, Kampala)
[4/4] After the Sudan revolution in 2019, Hassan Shire and I travelled to Sudan. We established a network of human rights defenders, and by 2020, DefendDefenders was registered as an organization with offices in Khartoum. Therefore, at the beginning of April this year, I travelled to Sudan to support the team and carry out some work there as well. I had only been there for two weeks when the war broke out again. My apartment was hit by a bomb. I cannot adequately express my feelings in words. To this day, I have failed to find the right words, the appropriate vocabulary to describe the feeling when war erupted. It was unfortunate, saddening, depressing, and traumatizing. It happened on a normal Friday evening. I had just met my long-time friends, and we were catching up, cooking, having drinks, and listening to music. We had even made plans for the weekend, but everything changed. It took three weeks to travel from Khartoum to Kampala, which is usually a 3-hour flight. We drove and walked until we crossed over into South Sudan. However, when we finally reached there, it took almost a month to get a plane to Juba. We found ourselves in a deserted place with no shelter or food. Every day, we had to walk 30 kilometres to the next town just to access water and find something to eat. Then, we would return to that airport in the middle of nowhere, hoping that a plane would come and pick us up. (Nsambya, Kampala)
[3/4] My experience as a child soldier shaped how I saw the happenings in my home country. Conflict was a key element for me to be a human rights defender, witnessing villages being burned down, relatives killed, and women raped. These violations motivated me to do something to stop them. To halt these incidents, I had to find like-minded people who shared the same goals. I sought out activists and organizations fighting for peace, justice, and accountability for the victims and human rights in Sudan. I provided free legal aid to internally displaced persons and documented human rights violations in my hometown and the Darfur region as a whole. At some point, we conducted investigations into these violations to support the work of the International Criminal Court. Unfortunately, we were arrested and detained. Personally, I was arrested, released, and then arrested again. I don’t remember the exact period I spent in jail, but it was long, and my colleagues were severely tortured. In 2009, during the aftermath of the indictment of Sudanese President Omar Bashir by the International Criminal Court, some colleagues and I had to flee the country. With the support of DefendDefenders and the leadership of the late Osman Hummaida, we established our organization, the African Centre for Peace and Justice Studies, in Uganda. Our aim was to reconnect and support our colleagues who were left behind in Sudan. It is a Sudanese organization based in Uganda, enabling us to continue our advocacy work concerning the situation in Sudan at the time, as well as monitoring and reporting on human rights violations. (Nsambya, Kampala)
[2/4] I spent 9 months as a child soldier. Being a soldier is not an easy experience. It is very tough and traumatizing, witnessing people die in front of you and the uncertainty of whether you’ll get to see tomorrow or not. Music was our solace. We had a Walkman and cassette tapes with albums like Awilo Longomba, DMX’s Ruff Ryderz, and Tupac’s All Eyez On Me. We didn’t have many Walkman players, so we had to listen and then pass them to our colleagues, sharing the music. We knew the songs word for word because that’s all we listened to every single day. There was a time when we were jailed for 20 days because we disobeyed orders, and military prison is hell. We were locked up in a dark room with no light and nobody to talk to. We slept on the cold stony floor. They only took us out for 20 minutes every day to eat and then subjected us to 2 full hours of torture. The torture methods varied each day depending on which soldier was in charge. It was tough to endure. Our friends outside tried to make it bearable by bribing the soldiers on guard with cigarettes and alcohol so that we could at least have access to music. One day you’d have dreams and hopes, and the next, you’d feel suicidal. I can’t count how many times I just wanted to take the bullet and end everything. I’m not a believer and I don’t practice any religion. I must say, music is the only thing that gave me hope at that time. Music helped me so much during those 9 months of military service, especially listening to Tupac’s All Eyez On Me album. It’s very special to me, especially after losing one of my childhood friends who was brilliant and had dreams of studying medicine at the university right after our military service. I remember it was a normal day at our base. We were chilling and playing cards when his commander called him because there was an ambush and the team needed support. He left his cards, thinking he would come back and we’d resume the game. One or two hours later, the fighting intensified, and we were called for backup. When we got there, we found his lifeless body lying down. It was devastating, losing a friend at 16. I kept his blood-stained clothes for so long. I’d look at them and smell them. It was crazy having to bury your friend so young and losing them in such a manner. I was just lucky to return home because most of my friends and colleagues were killed, while others stayed and continued as professional soldiers. Today, I’m very passionate about children’s rights, which stems from my past experience as a child soldier. I believe children should be protected. I wish a normal life for all children, especially in Africa. By a normal life, I mean a child should be a child, wake up, go to school, have proper shelter, and have access to medical care and food. Not a life where they’re homeless or have to pick up arms and become child soldiers. (Nsambya, Kampala)
[1/4] I was born in the western part of Sudan, in the Darfur region. This region hasn't witnessed peace in the past 30 to 35 years. I was born in conflict, raised in conflict, and even went to school in conflict. Conflict has been the biggest part of my life. It has shaped my life in everything that I do, whether it is human rights activism or music. I became a child soldier around the age of 17 when I was in high school. It was in 1990s when the Sudanese army was fighting the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). The Sudanese army was almost defeated. Having lost the entire South Sudan to the SPLA, they called the public to join and support the army. After realizing this wasn’t really working, they came up with the idea of national service. When you were done with high school, you had to serve in the army before you were allowed to join the university. You would undergo 3 months of military training before getting deployed to the battlefield for 1 year. After that period, you would be awarded a certificate as proof that you served. For us, we joined with no option because we wanted to continue with our education. We also hoped that the war would end while we were undergoing training. Our training was only for 45 days, and the war was still on. We were deployed to protect the oil field in a region called Unity State in South Sudan. At that time, it was just one country. We didn’t even have prior war experience, so this was our first, let alone the fact that the environment was also new to us. I lost colleagues and friends, not just to war but also to diseases and the lack of access to food and clean drinking water. The enemy would attack, and we would find ourselves just running. In the process, some of my colleagues would lose their way back to the base and walk right into enemy territory, while others were left in the middle of nowhere with no food or water. They starved to death. That was over 20 years ago, but I still remember everything so vividly, and I get nightmares about those events from time to time. (Nsambya, Kampala)