Sudan murals commemorate protest ‘martyrs’!

Khartoum: Sudanese protester Walid Abdelrahim was shot dead last month in Khartoum but for his mother he is still alive — thanks to a colourful mural of his smiling face on a wall of their home.
“The painting keeps him alive,” said Maiyssa Omar, her voice choking as she talked of her son, who was killed during a three-day nationwide civil disobedience campaign in June.
The campaign had been launched in response to a brutal raid on a weeks-long sit-in in the capital on June 3 that left dozens of demonstrators dead and hundreds wounded.“When I see his painting… it gives me strength. I feel proud to be a mother of a martyr,” Omar said as she looked at her son’s face painted on the wall of their one-storey house in Bahri, a northern district in Khartoum.
The portrait is part of a campaign launched by Sudanese artist Assil Diab to draw murals and graffiti to commemorate demonstrators killed in the months-old protest movement that has rocked the northeast African country.
Doctors close to the protest movement say 246 people have been killed across Sudan since demonstrations erupted in December. Officials have given a lower death toll.
The protests initially broke out against the regime of veteran leader Omar al Bashir. Following his ouster by the army on April 11, protesters continue to agitate against the ruling generals who seized power.
These murals are specifically drawn on the walls of protesters’ own homes or in their neighbourhoods.
Diab, a former employee of Doha-based Al Jazeera television network, and her team got their motivation from a protest catchcry: “Our martyrs didn’t die, they are alive among the revolutionaries!”
“The idea is to immortalise their legacy in their own homes and to make the people of their neighbourhoods proud of a martyr who sacrificed his life for Sudan,” Diab, 29, said by telephone from Doha.
“Graffiti makes martyrs come alive and reminds people of them even if the people themselves did or did not support the revolution.”
Diab, who lives in the Qatari capital with her family but often returns to her homeland, said painting each mural costs her about $635 given the high prices of colours and tools she uses.
“But martyrs took to the streets and died for us. This is the least we can do for them,” said Diab, who has drawn about 30 portraits of protesters killed in Khartoum.
For years such artwork remained underground amid censorship imposed by heavy-handed security agents of Bashir’s regime, who considered it anti-establishment or pure vandalism. — AFP