4 Lessons of Activism from Marcus Garvey

Yesterday, people around the world celebrated "Marcus Garvey's" day. On August 17, 1887 a great man was born. a man who restored the African pride to black people around the world. one of the most influential figures in the history of the black man, if not the most.

Usually when we think about black equality and civil rights around the world, we think of people like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela, but it was Marcus Garvey who first promoted the issue significantly.

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At age 24, he had already earned a reputation as a local journalist and political activist in Jamaica. At 27 he started the 'UNIA' ( the united negro improvement association ), an international organization to help black people economically, to protect their culture and help people with all kinds of racial discrimination.

He founded the first black shipping company in history – the 'black star' and a "black" newspaper that distributed all over the world.

He Led the largest black movement in history, Which at its peak, has attracted millions of people worldwide.

His work influenced many black leaders in the 20th century, presidents and prime ministers Africans like Patrice Lumumba (Congo), Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya), Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana) and Nelson Mandela (South Africa), and activist like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Elijah Muhammad. Schools, bridges and parks around the world are named after him, and he is considered as a prophet among the Rastafarians.

Marcus garvey's beliefs

Above all, Marcus Garvey believed that race matters. He saw the black man oppressed all over the world by governments with diverse ideologies not because of his views, education, economic status or social status, but because of his race - simply by being black - and he was not wrong. Hence he began to preach that because the black man oppressed universally only because of his race, he must put race above all. because the whole world relate to black people in the same way just because of their color, black people from all over the world have to reunite as a race and put the interest of the black men and women over any other interest.

He reminded his followers that the slave ships brought no Jamaicans or Trinidadians, Americans or Belizeans - but Africans. Years of slavery and oppression displaced their African culture and traditions.

That’s why he started calling for counter-migration of black people from America, the Caribbean and from all over the world back to Africa to establish an African empire – where the blacks will benefit equal rights like the rest of the world.

"Where is the black man government? Where is his king and his kingdom? Where is his president, his country and his ambassador?? His army, his navy. His men of big affairs? I could not find them and then I declared I will help to make them."

Garvey obviously failed to realize many of his objectives : his 'black star' shipping company failed at the end. migration of millions of American blacks to Africa was too ambitious task and obviously was never implemented the way Garvey wanted. He was deported from the United States, and despite millions of dollars passed through his hands he did not die a wealthy man. But despite this, he made his mark in the world - he led the largest international black movement in history, and influenced similar struggles up till today - the civil rights movement in the United States up other internal conflicts around the world. He was a man who brought unification and strength to Black people throughout the world.

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What we as activists can learn from this great man?

1.It is all about timing.

the west indies in the late 19's and the early 20's was not an easy place for the african people who formed the majority of the in those territories. slavery had not long before ended in nearly all of the british islands and many of the black adults alive during young garvey's childhood would therefore have been slaves at some point of their lives.

The end of slavery had meant some relief from the harsher aspects of life under the system but it did not mean automatic equality with the white people - The situation was far from it. .

The vast majority of blacks were poor, most of them were farmers that worked in the fields and plantations belong to white land owners in Tough Working conditions and for low salaries - just like during the slavery time. 90 percent of the local population did not possess the right to vote or other political rights - rights that were reserved for whites only. Although governments have started providing educational services to black children yet still only about 20 thousand blacks out of quarter of a million blacks in Jamaica (where garvey was born) were illiterate.

Inequality between blacks and whites existed in all aspects of life, and the situation in Africa, South and Central America was even worse.. africa was in the last throes of european conquest and the black world was reeling from the murder of millions of Africans and near total annihilation of its independence.

africa was in the last throes of european conquest and the black world was reeling from the near total annihilation of its independence

In the United States there were segregation laws that separated blacks and whites in schools, residential areas, and in public places. Black people generally received lower wages than their white frien and violence by white people against blacks were most of the time justified in the courts.

Out of This grim reality Marcus Garvey we know today rose:

" i was determined that the black man would not continue to be kicked about by all the outher races and nations of the world, as I sew it in the west indies, south and central America and as I read of it in America. I sew before me then even as I do now, a new world of black men, not peons, serfs, dogs and slaves but a nation of sturdy men making their impress upon civilization and causing a new light to dawn upon the human race."

The time was right, garvey appeared on the scene when the need was greatest.

2. Not to act, speak or write about topics we are not mastered in

Garvey understood that when one deals with a subject he is not properly versed in it there will always be an ideological opponent that could embarrass him and reject his claims. He was also wise enough to realize that the personal experience of a person was not enough to give him the knowledge he needs so he must acquire his knowledge from the experience of others as well

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Garvey did not stop reading. He read and studied the depth of the history of the black man, he studied disciplines of social sciences, humanities and industry. He learned  about struggles and ideas already forgotten from the world and drew relevant conclusions that led to the modern struggle. He was not afraid to read texts of white intellectuals or intellectuals that he opposed to their ideas.he did it when he remembers that they were for their own interests - the text is not sacred.

3.Give hope

Garvey knew his people – the black people. He taught and inspired them.

He gave his people hope and provided them with a goal to achieve – a free and redeemed Africa. A world of black men and women proudly and fiercely equal to the rest of humankind. And he earned the right to criticize them.

He criticized them for being too weak and for begging for equal rights from those that suppress them instead Instead of demanding it.

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"Babylon did it. Assyria did. France under Napoleon did it. Germany under Prince Von Bismarck did it.  America under George Washington did it. AFRICA WITH 400 MILLION BLACK PEOPLE CAN DO IT".

Garvy teaches us that hope is the power that motivates people to rise up and bring the change they want to bring to the world. "There is a light at the end of the tunnel" he shouts. But we must not afraid of criticize ourselves and our partners in order to improve and move forward towards the light.

4. Never despair. Never give up.

Each individual who seek revolution and trying to change the existing system or the ideas that dominates the world will always encounter opposition from the ruling powers of that time. This law existed from the dawn of history, and probably will continue to exist forever: the prophets in the biblical period, Jesus, Maimonides, Galileo, the leaders of the French Revolution, the Northern forces in the American Civil War, Marcus Garvey, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela and many others – they all fought for revolution and they all were suppressed by those who opposed the change

Common to all these mentioned above and the difference between them and the people we are not familiar with their names, is that they did not give up. despite many attempts by the authorities to suppress them, they continued their struggle no matter what - some of them stopped only when murdered.

Marcus Garvey, was criticized from within and without, he was charged with false charges by the United States government and expelled from the country, he received death threats demanding him to give up his ambitions. He never stopped.

Unlike leaders like Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela who died after the victory of their struggle. He died in the midst of the struggle - so when he died the governments still tried to erase his ideas and the legacy  he left behind after his death.

Everything was done to wipe out the record of garvey's phenomenal career. A whole generation of schoolchildren grew up in the West Indies, afro-America and Africa who never saw the name of marcus garvey mentioned in their history books.

The man who had led the largest international political movement among Africans in history, disappeared from the pages of history. Where he was mentioned it was usually in a very few sentences suggesting that he was probably a crock, criminal and a fool.

In 1964, two years after Jamaica became independent – the jamaician government proclaimed him the country's first national hero.

He didn't give up. he didn't stop. his ideas didn't come fulfilled in his lifetime, , but due to his devotion to the task, some of them were fulfilled after his death.

I believe that we as modern social and political activists can learn a lot more from Marcus Garvey. Even during his lifetime the ideas he promoted was heavily criticized from within and without and today most of them are seen as irrelevant at all. But his ideas is not the main lesson. It is his influence that evident to this day - he gave hope to millions of blacks and gave them a reason to stand up and claim their rights, to demand a better life. He gave pride and self-esteem to those who looked in the mirror and found it difficult to love themselves.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey was a man that lived a life with a mission. Although his journey may have seemed impossible, his never-ending strength and dedication caused many people’s dreams and wishes to become realities

He was responsible for putting forward ideas that helped to advance the political consciousness of blacks worldwide and influenced social movements around the world.  He changed the life of millions.

"Look for me in a whirlwind or a storm! Look for me all around you! For with God's grace, I shall come back with countless millions of Black men and women who have died in America, those who have died in the West Indies, and those who have died in Africa, to aid you in the fight for liberty, freedom and life!...

Can we do it?We can do it?

We shall do it.  "

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Hamas's Human Shield Strategy

The current Gaza conflict is likely to be remembered as a terrible tragedy. Not Because the IDF has unintentionally killed Palestinian civilians but because Hamas has made the use of human shields a despicable primary military strategy. encouraged by the unforgivable silence of leading international NGOs, Hamas deploys two complementary tactics that mock and debase the humanitarian core of international law: firing hundreds of rocket targeting Israeli population centers (including Jews, Muslims and Christians) and the massive use of Palestinian civilians—including women and children—as human shields.

While Israel makes an effort to fight with accurate surgical air strikes directed against Hamas militant and it's terrorist sites, Hamas is doing the opposite and firing rockets indiscriminately towards Israeli population centers in order to kill as many Israelis as possible.

While Israel using their anti-missile "iron dome" shield to protect their civilians, Hamas does just the opposite and Instead of keeping its citizens out of harm’s way they are using and exploit  the Palestinian civilian population as human shields for its militant and infrastructure.

In the past, it meant putting missile launchers near and inside of schools, hospitals, and mosques as well among civilian homes in the densely populated strip, But as Israel has stepped up its efforts to try and avoid civilian casualties, even as it seeks to silence the terrorist fire, Hamas has also increased its efforts to ensure that as many inhabitants of Gaza as possible are hurt in the fighting.

Why Hamas using they're own civilians as human shield?

Hamas sees the use of human shields as a win-win strategy, since if it deters an Israeli response, its fighters and weapons will be safe, and if Israel does respond, the civilian casualties will be another photo opportunity that can be internationally exploited for propaganda purposes and building popular support playing on anger against Israel.

When Hamas terrorist's fires rockets at Israeli cities they usually do this from densely populated areas using timers or remotely controlled launchers, leaving the terrorists themselves at a safe distance. To protect the launch sites from preemptive strikes by the Israeli Air Force, Hamas sends children to play near the launchers or sets them up near schools, playgrounds, hospitals or mosques.

When the IDF is preparing to attack a civilian area (seemingly civilian structures but used in practice as an armory, Hamas headquarters or a firing position) it takes extensive measures in order to avoid civilian casualties such as using telephone calls and leaflets to warn civillians before striking an area. In some cases, the Israelis fire missile without explosive warhead onto the roof of a building to get Palestinians who gathered there to leave before it strikes the building.

These messages urge civilians to leave the area, and even might spare the lives of terrorists. And what Hamas is doing? – Hamas urges civilians to defend the site with their lives, they're telling them to stay there. Is a government that send citizens to protect with their lives a military site a legitimate government?

Hamas don’t even try to hide the fact that they use civilians as human shield, in fact they're admit it loud and clear: Hamas Interior Ministry said in an on-air TV announcement to Gaza residents this week that Israeli’s warning messages "are designed to weaken our resolve and to sow panic and fear among us, in light of the failures of our enemies. We call on all Gaza residents not to pay attention to these messages and not to leave their homes."

Another example of this was noted, when Hamas’s Al Aqsa TV in Gaza aired the group’s spokesperson, Sami Abu Zuhri, urging the population of the Gaza strip to refuse to heed warnings and to use their bodies to shield Hamas facilities:

"The policy of people confronting the Israeli warplanes with their bare chests in order to protect their homes has proven effective against occupation.  Also, this policy reflects the character of our brave, courageous people. We in Hamas call upon our people to adopt this policy, in order to protect the Palestinian homes."

About The Critics

In the lethal "fog of war," even the most-disciplined, best-intentioned armies errantly kill civilians caught in the crossfire as well as their own soldiers who die from friendly fire (a difficult concept to digest). Does anybody remember the thousands of French civilians killed by the Allies during World War II's Normandy Invasion?

In their current asymmetrical war with Hamas, the Israeli Defense Forces are using cellphone messages, leaflets, and other measures in the attempt to decouple civilians from military targets placed in their midst by the terrorist organization. As former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, Col. Richard Kemp said of Israel’s previous operations in Gaza: “the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”

As well as The flow of hundreds of trucks loaded with foodstuffs and medicine into Gaza from Israel is a daily routine in order to allow further humanitarian supplies to reach noncombatants.

This Israeli effort is obligatory morally and ethically, but in terms of the reality of today's warfare it is an outstanding effort. No other army had ever acted in the same way towards the enemy's civilians.

Despite the obvious logic, Israel gets nothing but a global diplomatic and media chorus of boos from those who promote human rights but willfully blind to the ultimate outrage against humanitarian international law occurring today in Gaza by the hands of Hamas.

 The Bottom Line

Shields protect honorable combatants in the midst of battle; Iron dome is the modern city wall aims to protect civilians; Human shields? It is the weapon of the most cowardly tyrants who violate every principle of humanitarian international law.

few in the mainstream media find it necessary to critical and report on Hamas crimes – let's say plain and simple: Hamas violates the international law  contrary to all ethical and moral standards of warfare – they claim they are protecting they're civilians but they are their greatest enemy.

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A Girl’s Escape

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — She was a 13-year-old girl who said she was beaten daily by strangers who forced her to work unpaid in their home, and she wanted to escape.

Marilaine was one of 200,000 or more Haitian children called restaveks, typically serving as unpaid maids in strangers’ homes, working for room and board. It is a vast system of child trafficking that is often characterized as a modern form of slavery. I followed Marilaine for a week in Haiti as she tried to flee, find her parents and start life over — and this is her story.

Marilaine grew up in a remote village where no family planning or public schooling is available, one of 12 children to impoverished parents who later separated. As Marilaine tells the story, one day when she was 10 years old, she walked to her father’s house to ask him to help pay her school fees. Instead, he dispatched her here to the capital to work as a restavek, a Creole term used to describe child laborers, without even telling her mother.

“My father didn’t want to spend money on my school fees,” Marilaine explained.

As is common for restaveks, Marilaine slept on the floor and woke up at 5 each morning to clean the house, fetch water and wash dishes. She says she was beaten daily with electrical cords.

Marilaine was allowed no contact with her family. Once, she says, she tried to run away but was caught and beaten. At school, she often cried, and she had scars on her arms and legs from beatings.

Yet the restavek system isn’t always slavery. Sometimes the child gets more food and education than would have been the case in her own family (two-thirds of restaveks are girls). Marilaine says that she was fed properly and that she was also allowed to attend a free afternoon school.

Many Haitian restaveks are treated much worse. One 12-year-old restavek I interviewed said that she rises at 4 each morning to get everything ready for “the princesses,” as she calls the teenage girls in the house. Everyone in the house beats her, she says, and they refuse to let her see her mother for fear that she might run away.

An aid group called the Restavek Freedom Foundation helped Marilaine escape her home and find refuge in a safe house for restaveks. The mood was festive in the beautiful home as the dozen girls living there cheered Marilaine’s arrival and hugged her.

Marilaine picked up a book, telling me that she wasn’t allowed to touch books at her old house. She tried on new clothes. She slept in a bed.

But the family that Marilaine had been working for was furious. I visited the woman of the house, and she insisted that she had never beaten the girl and that Marilaine had in effect been kidnapped from her.

The leader of the neighborhood association, Junior Pataud, offered a conflicting defense. “In Haitian culture, it’s normal to beat a child,” he said. “But that’s not the same as mistreatment.”

The next day, the neighbors gathered angrily outside the school Marilaine had attended, blaming it for the girl’s escape and threatening to set fire to it unless Marilaine was returned. After hours of tense negotiations, the police averted a riot.

A few days later, I drove for several hours with the police and the Restavek Freedom Foundation to Marilaine’s village. When Marilaine stepped out of the car, family members and neighbors were stunned. They had assumed that she had died years ago.

Yet the reunion was a letdown. Marilaine’s mom didn’t seem at all thrilled to see her daughter again, and Marilaine quickly made it clear that she wanted to return to the safe house in the capital so that she could attend a good school. The police told Marilaine that she would have to stay in the village with her family, and she burst into tears.

The authorities will probably eventually let Marilaine return to the Restavek Freedom Foundation safe house, but the episode was a reminder that helping people is a complex, uphill task — and that the underlying problem behind human trafficking is poverty.

One way to fight such human trafficking would be to provide free and accessible birth control, so that women like Marilaine’s mother don’t end up with 12 children that they struggle to feed.

Another would be to provide free public education, so that parents don’t feel that the only way to get schooling for their children is to send them off as restaveks.

That’s why what’s at stake in fighting global poverty isn’t just poor people’s incomes. It’s also dignity and freedom — and the right of a girl to grow up in something better than quasi slavery.

My New Year’s wish: May Marilaine in 2014 finally find freedom and an education

This Article was published originally in Nytimes and was written by  Nicholas Kristof

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Never again? : Crimes Against Humanity In North Korea

North Korea's leadership is committing systematic and appalling human rights abuses against its own citizens on a scale unparalleled in the modern world, crimes against humanity with strong resemblances to those committed by the Nazis, a United Nations inquiry has concluded.

The UN's commission on human rights in North Korea, which gathered evidence for almost a year, including often harrowing testimony at public hearings worldwide, said there was compelling evidence of torture, execution and arbitrary imprisonment, deliberate starvation and an almost complete lack of free thought and belief.

The chair of the three-strong panel set up by the UN commissioner on human rights has personally written to North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, to warn that he could face trial at the international criminal court (ICC) for his personal culpability as head of state and leader of the military.

"The commission wishes to draw your attention that it will therefore recommend that the United Nations refer the situation in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea [the formal name for North Korea] to the international criminal court to render accountable all those, including possibly yourself, who may be responsible for the crimes against humanity," Michael Kirby, an Australian retired judge, wrote to Kim.

At a press conference to launch the report, Kirby said there were "many parallels" between the evidence he had heard and crimes committed by the Nazis and their allies in the second world war. He noted the evidence of one prison camp inmate who said his duties involved burning the bodies of those who had starved to death and using the remains as fertiliser.

"When you see that image in your mind of bodies being burned it does bring back memories of the end of world war two, and the horror and the shame and the shock," Kirby said. "I never thought that in my lifetime it would be part of my duty to bring revelations of a similar kind."

Holding up a copy of the report, Kirby said other nations could not say of North Korea, as happened with the Nazis, that they did not know the extent of the crimes: "Now the international community does know. There will be no excusing a failure of action because we didn't know. It's too long now. The suffering and the tears of the people of North Korea demand action."

Asked how many North Korean leaders and officials could ultimately be held responsible, Kirby said it could reach the hundreds.

The inquiry heard public evidence in Seoul, Tokyo, London and Washington. Among more than 80 witnesses, along with 240 people who gave confidential interviews to avoid reprisals against relatives in North Korea, were escapers from the country's feared prison camps, including one who reported seeing a female prisoner forced to drown her newborn baby because it was presumed to have a Chinese father.

The near-400-page main report concludes there is overwhelming evidence that crimes against humanity have been, and are still being, committed within the hermetic nation.

It says: "These are not mere excesses of the state: they are essential components of a political system that has moved far from the ideals on which it claims to be founded. The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world."

North Korea refused to participate in the investigation or allow the commission to visit, and immediately rejected the findings, calling them "a product of politicisation of human rights on the part of EU and Japan in alliance with the US hostile policy".

The report recommends that the UN refer the situation in North Korea to the ICC. While North Korea is not a signatory to the treaty that created the ICC, the UN security council can extend the court's remit in exceptional cases.

In practice this would probably be vetoed by China, which has close links with North Korea and maintains a policy of sending back people found to have fled across the border, despite widespread evidence that they face mistreatment and detention on their return. The commission's report heavily criticises China for this, saying the policy appears to breach international laws on refugees.

The report concludes that many of the crimes against humanity stem directly from state policies in a country which, since it was formed from the division of Korea, has been run on a highly individual variant of Stalinist-based self-reliance and centralised dynastic rule. The inquiry found "an almost complete denial of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion", with citizens brought into an all-encompassing system of indoctrination from childhood.

Perhaps the most chilling section describes the vast network of secret prison camps, known as kwanliso, where hundreds of thousands of North Koreans are believed to have died through starvation, execution or other means. It is estimated that between 80,000 and 120,000 political prisoners are still held, in many cases secretly

The report says: "Their families are not informed of their fate or whereabouts. Persons accused of political crimes therefore become victims of enforced disappearance. Making the suspect disappear is a deliberate feature of the system that serves to instil fear in the population."

Other particularly disturbing parts of the report detail the experiences of women who are interned on their forced return from China when it is believed they could be pregnant from a Chinese man, something which contravenes North Korea notions of racial purity. Aside from the drowning of the newborn baby the panel heard testimony of forced abortions, sometimes using chemicals or beatings, or surgical procedures without anaesthetic.

Other sections of the report cover abuses such as the lack of food. While natural disasters were in part to blame for a famine that killed huge numbers in the 1990s, the report notes that the North Korean state has "used food as a means of control over the population". It adds: "It has prioritised those whom the authorities believe to be crucial in maintaining the regime over those deemed expendable."

The commission also condemns the almost complete lack of freedom of movement for North Koreans both within their country and abroad, the discrimination of the so-called songbun system, where the state politically classifies people based on their birth and family, and the large-scale abduction of people from other countries, mainly Japan and South Korea.

The report says the abuses clearly meet the threshold needed for proof of crimes against humanity in international law. t adds: "The perpetrators enjoy impunity. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is unwilling to implement its international obligation to prosecute and bring the perpetrators to justice, because those perpetrators act in accordance with state policy."

Asked whether he believed the report would change anything immediately in North Korea, Kirby recalled a UN mission he led in the early 1990s to report on human rights abuses in Cambodia, some years before that country's eventual UN-led tribunal on Khmer Rouge crimes. He said: "Bearing witness, collecting the stories, recording them and putting them there for future use can sometimes bear fruit a little later."

THIS ARTICLE ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON "THE GUARDIAN"  AND WAS WRITTEN BY Peter Walker

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Sudan death sentence woman 'freed'

A Sudanese woman sentenced to death for abandoning her Islamic faith has been freed from jail, her lawyer has told the BBC.

Meriam Ibrahim's death penalty was overturned by an appeal court, the official Suna news agency reported.

She is married to a Christian man and was sentenced under Sharia law to hang for apostasy in May after refusing to renounce Christianity.

Her husband, Daniel Wani, said he was looking forward to seeing her.

He wanted his family to leave Sudan as soon possible, Mr Wani, who is a US citizen, told the BBC Focus on Africa radio programme.

The death sentence for Meriam Yahia Ibrahim Ishag, who gave birth to a daughter in prison not long after she was convicted, sparked international outrage.

"We are very very happy about this - and we're going to her now," Mrs Ibrahim's lawyer Elshareef Ali told the BBC.

"They have released her... she's on her way to home," he said.

Mr Ali said Mrs Ibrahim had shown "extraordinary courage" during her ordeal.

"It's a victory for freedom of religion in Sudan... By Mariam's strong position, we believe that in the future no-one will be subjected to such a trial," he said.

Analysis: James Copnall, former BBC Sudan correspondent

The outcry generated by Meriam Ibrahim's case was difficult for the authorities to ignore.

The government in Khartoum is already dealing with an economic crisis, and conflicts in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile. It simply does not need further ill-feeling - and it is worth pointing out that many of the most vocal opponents of the conviction were Sudanese, not foreigners.

In fact, Mrs Ibrahim's case looks like part of a recurring theme.

In 2009 Lubna Hussein, dubbed the "trouser woman", was arrested for wearing "indecent clothing" in public - in her case a pair of loose green trousers. She was at risk of a public flogging. Eventually she was given a small fine, which was then paid on her behalf to set her free. In 2012, Intisar Sharif Abdullah was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, before she too was released without charge.

In every case, the authorities insist the justice system came to an independent decision, but many believe it bowed to public pressure.

Born to a Muslim father, Mrs Ibrahim, 27, married Mr Wani, a Christian, in 2011.

She has been in jail since February, along with her young son.

Mr Ali said he had not yet seen the appeal court's judgement, and had learned about the verdict through the media.

Sudan has a majority Muslim population. Islamic law has been in force there since the 1980s.

Even though Mrs Ibrahim was brought up as an Orthodox Christian, the authorities consider her to be a Muslim.

Her husband, who was born in South Sudan before it became independent from Sudan, went to the US in 1998 at the height of the civil war.

He met Mrs Ibrahim in 2011 on a visit to Sudan and they were married at the main church in Khartoum.

this article was originally published in BBC NEWS,

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