Interview with Mohamed & Magda

By: GORDON DANIELS
Mohamed Elgadi stands in front of pictures drawn by Sudanese children depicting the horror of genocide in Darfur. The drawings were exhibited recently at Earthfoods in Amherst

AMHERST - Amherst residents Mohamed Elgadi and Magda Ahmed know firsthand the violence the Sudanese government is capable of handing down against its own people.

Twelve years ago, the couple came to the Valley as Sudanese refugees. Elgadi, 54, still bears emotional scars from the four months he was kept in a Sudanese government "ghost house," a secret place of physical and psychological torture.

His crime? Elgadi, along with an underground organization called the Democratic Alliance Group, says he was documenting the government's humanitarian abuses.



Since coming to America, Elgadi and Ahmed, 51, have worked to raise awareness about atrocities committed by the Sudanese government - and now about genocide in Darfur. Ahmed said she could not count how many times she and her husband have brought their story to classrooms, forums, rallies and panel discussions. "It's hard to count when you do this at least once a month for 12 years," said Ahmed.

Their tale includes accounts of how Elgadi was sold out by a friend's neighbor to government security agents; the hunt, with the Democratic Alliance Group, for ghost houses; Elgadi and Ahmed's journey to Yemen in search of safety, and, after civil war broke out there a year later, how they came to America.

"Being active in this way is part of my own healing," said Ahmed. "Part of the reason we are so active is closure.

"This is a way to get back at the Sudanese government," she said. "It's a way to keep us sane in an insane world, man."

Elgadi co-founded the Darfur Alert Coalition in Philadelphia while working in Pennsylvania with the American Friends Service Committee's Project Voice program. Project Voice seeks to add immigrants' voices to the discussion on American immigration policy. For a time, Elgadi was also president of GATS, Group Against Torture in Sudan, which he founded in Philadelphia.

At home in the Valley, Elgadi and Ahmed are active members of the local chapter of Amnesty International. Elgadi also serves on the advisory committee of Judgement on Genocide: International Citizens Tribunal for Sudan, a project that has created a forum for discussion of the genocide and crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Sudanese government.

Ahmed is co-founder of the Western Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur. The group seeks to raise awareness of the genocide in Darfur through education, panel discussions and petition drives. The coalition was also a driving force behind bringing a divestment resolution, which was later approved, to Amherst Town Meeting.

Life in the Sudan has gotten worse since Elgadi and Ahmed left in the early 1990s. "It wasn't as bloody as it is now," Ahmed said. "Now it's better to be a criminal than someone who is political."

The country, Ahmed said, is run by Islamist religious police. Like most people from Sudan, Elgadi and Ahmed are Muslims, but are quick to caution that not everyone who praises the name of Allah is Muslim. The Islamists, Ahmed alleges, are people who pervert the religion to satisfy their own needs. These are the people who have ruled Sudan since the 1990s, she said.

Elgadi and Ahmed believe the slaughter of people in Sudan is greater than what most politicians are willing to admit. At least 450,000 Sudanese civilians have died as a result of the government-backed genocide and 3.5 million have been turned into refugees, Elgadi said. More conservative estimates have the death total at 200,000, with 2 million refugees.

"The regime in Sudan, I don't know what people can do to escape it," Elgadi said. "They need to understand that they cannot do this ... they cannot torture and hurt their own people."

Despite the situation in Sudan a decade ago, Ahmed said leaving Sudan was difficult for her. "It was home," she said. Still, they had to leave.

After Elgadi was arrested, Ahmed was left with their two young daughters, alone and worried. Security agents began coming to the houses of Ahmed's extended family twice a day, riffling through their belongings and searching for passports. They were searching for Ahmed. The agents would pressure the family give her up.

Ahmed was working for World Education, a firm based in Boston. The company, then doing contract work for the United States Agency for International Development, was able to transport Ahmed and her children to a branch office in Yemen. Elgadi came to live with the family eight months later, after being released.

About a year after they left Sudan, civil war broke out in Yemen and the U.S. agency transported Ahmed, Elgadi and their children out of the country. They left with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a $5,000 debt for their trans-Atlantic flight.

In the Valley, Elgadi and Ahmed found a welcome home for their brand of civil activism. In 2003, they became heavily involved with raising awareness about the violence in their home country and Darfur.

"People need to take action, get angry," Ahmed said. "There are a list of actions people can do, but one of the best things you can do is talk to someone about this. It makes a difference, believe me, civil action works."