When I met Ahmed, he was in a room alone and in chains. His body was scarred by the beatings they had given him. You don’t know how old you are, but you are probably 10.
The school I found it in is one of the 30 Islamic institutions in Sudan, known as khalwas, which I covertly filmed over a period of two years, beginning in early 2018.
I witnessed and filmed many children, some as young as 5 years, who received severe beatings, routinely chained and held without food or water by sheiks, or religious men, in charge of schools.
Some of the children who did not appear in our documentary I said they had been raped or subjected to other forms of sexual abuse .
There are some 30. 000 khalwas across the country, according to data from the Sudanese government. They receive money from the government and private donors both in Sudan and around the world.
Children are taught to memorize the Quran. Because they do not charge anything, families consider them an alternative to traditional education , especially in remote villages where there are no government-run schools. Students are interns and only return home during the holidays.
For many, these schools that have operated for generations are central elements of Sudanese culture and are seen as part of the national identity.
However, in recent years, videos of beaten children have been widely shared on social media and stories have been published in local media about sheikhs accused of rape in the khalwas. The media, the government and even human rights organizations have ignored the complaints .
I wanted to reveal how widespread abuse is and give a voice to these children who do not have the opportunity to share their stories .
Even I had my own experiences. As a teenager, I attended a khalwa. Every day was an ordeal to try to avoid receiving a beating from the teachers.
I knew that I would fight with friends and family over this investigation, but the story had to be told. Along the way, some of the people I interviewed accuse me or n of being part of a “western plot to attack religious education.”
Fateh Al-Rahman Al-Hamdani When I contacted the BBC, I had already been filming covertly for several months on my own. One of the first khalwas I visited was called Haj el-Daly, where I was told that abuse had been perpetrated.
I entered the school mosque with everyone else during the noon prayers and I filmed secretly with my phone.
When I was kneeling, I heard a metallic sound. My heart stopped. I looked up and in front I saw that the children had shackles on their legs. They were chained like animals.
After the prayers were finished, the children shuffled out. But when I was leaving, I heard violent screams and suppressed crying.
The sounds led me to a dimly lit study room, where I found a child crying quietly, with his legs together chained . I began to secretly film what I saw.
This was Ahmed. He told me he wanted to go home. I tried to reassure him, but I could hear the voices of the sheikhs approaching, so I stopped filming and left the khalwa.
The investigative work of journalist Fateh Al-Rahman Al-Hamdani with the Arab Service of the BBC produced a documentary on the systematic abuse of children in Islamic schools in Sudan, an aside of which you can see here.
BBC Research | The horror of religious schools where children are chained
But I came back the next day so I could reveal more of what was going on there.
When I was filming with my phone, I realized that an older student was looking at me. He left suddenly and came back a little later with the sheikh in charge of the school.
The sheikh yelled at me, asking why I was filming the students. I managed to quickly get out the door and onto the street.
The administration of Haj el-Daly told the BBC thereafter that there is a new sheikh in charge of the school and that the beatings and chaining have stopped.
Memories of my own khalwa I returned home disturbed. If the confrontation with the sheikh had worsened, no one would know where he would be.
But I was also traumatized by what I saw. It brought back memories of my own passing through a khalwa as a teenager, where beatings were common, although no one was shackled.
I looked forward to my first day in that khalwa with such enthusiasm when I was 14 years. I tried on my jalabiya -traditional dress- and waited impatiently for the morning.
But very soon I realized that something was wrong . I noticed that the other children seemed frightened by the sheikhs and teachers.
The abuse started in the evening sessions. If we were sleepy or closed our eyes, the sheikh would whip us. That really woke you up.
I stayed in the khalwa for about a month, enduring many beatings. When I returned home, I told my parents that I did not want to go back, although I could not confess to the abuse I had suffered. They were not happy that I interrupted my studies, but they did not force me to return .
After the altercation with the Sheikh in charge of Haj el-Daly, I had a hard time regaining my confidence and continuing to film in the khalwas.
I took my evidence to the Arab Investigative Journalism Reporters (ARIJ) group, who put me in contact with the BBC’s Arab Service. From then on, everything changed.
My editor in London assigned me a producer, Mamdouh Akbik. He is Syrian and I am Sudanese, and although we both speak Arabic, our dialects are very different. But it wasn’t long before we worked together really well.
We planned which khalwas we would investigate, collected evidence, and discussed security and logistics. But the turning point was when I received covert recording equipment . That gave me confidence to continue my work.
Sudan is a vast country, encompassing mountains, the Red Sea, and vast deserts. During the investigation, I must have gone through more than 4. 500 kilometers of the territory, almost all by bus.
I met families whose children had been badly treated. In some cases they had died while in hospital and it was difficult to establish the cause of their deaths.
Fatima has filed a lawsuit against the school that her son. Sheikhs wield so much power and influence in their communities that it is rare for families to report them. The cases that make it to court take so long that families give up. Or they end up accepting some kind of compensation.
The tough legal battle against the sheikhs for families that is seen in our documentary is the exception , not the rule. Many families sincerely believe that sheikhs want the best for their students and if “mistakes” are made, it is God’s will.
My own family shares those beliefs and I had to keep it a secret my investigation. That turned out to be particularly difficult when I visited a khalwa in our town in North Dafur, where many of my relatives still live.
After the documentary was released, I was kicked out of a WhatsApp family group . I thought they would at least want to ask me questions or argue with me; Instead they treated me like a stranger.
But I received calls from my parents, who said they would support me, even though they were concerned for my safety. I was relieved that my family was so understanding.
The reaction to the documentary The documentary has had a great impact in Sudan. The families at the center of our research have been inundated with offers of financial, legal, and emotional support from people in their local communities and around the world.
There has been an outcry on social media, with calls to close the khalwas , while others say that our documentary is an attack on Islam and accuse the BBC of anti-Islamic propaganda.
But there is one powerful voice that has shone through its slow response: Sudan’s transitional government, which for the last year has been talking about reforming the khalwas.
In our tape, the Minister of Religious Affairs, Nasreddine Mufreh, declared that there would be no more “beatings, torture, violation of human rights or the rights of children of any kind ”
Following the release of the documentary, the Sudanese government said it would open proceedings against all the schools in which the BBC filmed.
They also broadcast a law forbidding beating children in educational institutions and they cut funding for the khalwas while doing a review of schools .
Some of those processes are signs of q Sudan is grappling with the ghosts of its recent past, but the presence of thousands of chained and abused children in the khalwas continues to create problems for the country.
That the government takes action will be a test of his will to challenge the powerful religious institutions in Sudan.
Some names have been changed .
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