Human rights defenders and journalists in Sudan are facing an increasingly dangerous environment as both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) intensify repression amid the ongoing conflict.
Recent cases highlight a severe deterioration in protections for defenders across the country. On 5 November 2025, human rights defender and humanitarian volunteer Al-Fadil Ismail Adam Abdelbari (Awfy) was arrested by the RSF in Zalingei, Central Darfur, and has since been detained without charge, access to due process, or public explanation. Similarly, labour leader Abdelwahab Ahmed Mohamed Hashem (“Bob”) was taken by SAF intelligence officers in North Kordofan on 23 September 2025, held incommunicado for weeks, and remains detained without charges, apparently in retaliation for private comments about the trade union movement and salary delays. In another alarming development, lawyer and HRD Abubakr Mansour Abdela was sentenced to death on 5 October 2025 in a trial marred by serious due-process concerns; his own lawyer, Abubakr Elmahi, was arrested days earlier, further undermining the fairness of the proceedings.
Meanwhile, conditions for journalists covering the conflict have become catastrophic. According to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the RSF’s assault on El-Fasher beginning on 26 October 2025 led to the torture, arbitrary detention, and forced displacement of journalists who had remained to report on the 18-month siege. Surviving journalists describe beatings, death threats, interrogations under torture, extortion, and the confiscation of their equipment as they attempted to flee. At least nine journalists escaped the city after the attack, reporting similar abuse. One journalist is currently missing and feared forcibly disappeared, while two others remain detained by the RSF. RSF is urging the UN Human Rights Council—meeting for a special session on 14 November—to condemn the attacks and call for urgent protection measures.
Taken together, these developments reveal a rapidly closing civic space in Sudan. Lawyers, community volunteers, resistance committees, trade unionists, and journalists are being targeted through arbitrary arrests, incommunicado detention, torture, enforced disappearances, and politically motivated judicial actions, leaving defenders and media workers increasingly exposed and isolated.
