Women beaten during protest outside court

SUDANESE police fired tear gas and beat women protesting outside a court yesterday during the trial of a female journalist accused of violating the Islamic dress code by wearing trousers in public.

Police dispersed about 50 protesters, mostly women, who were supporting Lubna Hussein, a former UN worker facing 40 lashes on the charge of “indecent dressing”. Some of the women demonstrators wore trousers in solidarity with Hussein.

Trousers are considered indecent under the strict interpretation of Islamic law, adopted by Sudan’s Islamic regime which came to power after a coup led by President Omar al-Bashir in 1989. But activists and lawyers say the implementation of the law is arbitrary.