Teddy bear troubles

You’ve really got to hand it to the Sudanese. My first thought when I heard that thousands of them marched Friday in Khartoum was “Oh, maybe they have finally decided to hold their government accountable for Darfur.” \nI couldn’t have been more mistaken. \nApparently these upstanding citizens of Khartoum were marching against Gillian Gibbons, a 54-year-old school teacher from England. \nShe was arrested last week for the “crime” of allowing her class of 6- and 7-year-olds to name a teddy bear “Muhammad.” Authorities say that by using his name for an animal, Gibbons has insulted the Prophet Muhammad and the religion of Islam.\nShe had asked her pupils to vote on a name for the teddy bear, which was to be used for a class activity. The students came up with eight names including Abdullah, Hussain and Muhammad. Twenty out of the 23 students voted for Muhammad, and so the bear was named accordingly.\nGibbons did exactly what her colleagues say she did; she made an “innocent mistake.”\nShe was given a sentence of 15 days in jail followed by deportation, though Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir later pardoned her. \nI just can’t get over the sheer absurdity of the whole thing. A prison sentence was a disgustingly disproportionate response to a minor cultural misunderstanding. \nWhat’s even more disheartening is that, by Sudanese standards, Gibbons was actually “getting off easy.” This same charge carries a maximum sentence of six months in prison and 40 lashes.\nApparently, that’s what the concerned people of Khartoum were marching for – they wanted the government to increase Gibbons’ sentence. \nThere are no concrete numbers on how many demonstrators showed up in Martyrs Square – outside the presidential palace – on Friday, but some estimates said it could have been thousands. Many of the protestors carried sticks and knives while some shouted things such as “Shame, shame on the UK” and “No tolerance – execution” and “Kill her, kill her by firing squad.” \nRiot police were present but did nothing to subdue the demonstration. In fact, the BBC notes that there was strong sentiment in Sudan that the protests had been orchestrated or endorsed by the government. Aside from the fact that nothing was done to quell them, the banners used by the marchers were all pre-printed.\nThe threat to the teacher’s safety was apparently so serious that authorities moved her from the women’s prison where she was being held to an undisclosed location.\nThe Sudanese government needs to get its priorities straight. A middle-aged schoolteacher has received harsher penalties for a cross-cultural slip-up than have the government-sponsored militias responsible for the deaths of 400,000 of their Darfurian countrymen and the displacement of 2.3 million more. \nIn Sudan’s book, it’s a more serious crime for a foreign schoolteacher to unknowingly “offend” Islam by naming a bear Muhammad than it is to massacre hundreds and thousands of civilians, rape women, torture and drop bombs on villages. \nAt this point I’m wondering, how can Sudan even take itself seriously?