posted by Alex de Waal
Abdel Salam Hassan Abdel Salam, who died in London this weekend, was a guiding light of Sudan’s human rights movement. He was one of a remarkable generation of Sudanese intellectuals, who grew up and gained a first-rate education in provincial towns (in his case, Wadi Halfa in Sudan’s far north), and who possessed a vivid curiosity about the complexities and paradoxes of their country. His first job was in the customs office, and one of the many oddities of Sudanese life which he explained was the convergence between poetry and customs officials – both vocations drew disproportionately from the Halfawiin. Abdel Salam remained a poet, but studied law.
