Siddiq Yousif: Loved By All, Friend And Foe
05 July, 2020
KHARTOUM (Sudanow) - A video footage in circulation on the social media depicts prominent communist party official Siddiq Yousif carried by youths during the last Tuesday demonstrations marking June the 30th, 1919, the day millions of Sudanese went out to block the military’s attempt to steal the country’s revolution.
There is no wonder in seeing young Sudanese carrying ‘Uncle’ Siddiq (as they call him) on their shoulders. The young men and women who fuelled the revolution, all of them knew Engineer Siddiq thoroughly well.
Despite his advanced age (approaching 90), he used to walk all along the distance from down-town Khartoum to the sit-in grounds around the Army General Command and to stay there with the crowds for long, long hours.
“I one day saw him walking towards the sit-in zone, tried my best to take him over, but could not. He sped faster, despite the 40 years age difference between us two,” commented one citizen, in a statement to Sudanow.
It is not only the young revolutionaries who love Engineer Siddiq: An Aljazeera Net report said Siddiq is respected by all the Sudanese political groups, including his party’s archrivals, the Islamists of the now toppled regime.
The Aljazeera attributed this love of Sudanese for Siddiq to “his pure soul, noble manner, steadiness and his commitment to his principles”.
“These traits had also qualified him to be his party’s permanent external relations official,” added the Aljazeera report.
Siddiq Yousif had joined the Sudanese Communist Party in 1948, during the British rule of Sudan. It was from there that he began his journey with prisons and arrests, until Sudan attained independence.
Then in the 1960s (during the rule of General Ibrahim Abbood) and in the 1970s (during the rule of General Nimeiri) he was a frequent inmate in the notorious Cooper Prison and other jails.
Then during the defunct regime of Omar Albashir he was a frequent guest at the ill-famed ‘ghost houses’ where he was subjected to the worst of torture, including mock execution.
Mock execution is a stratagem in which a victim is deliberately, but falsely, made to feel that their execution or that of another person is imminent or is taking place.
After his dream for the removal of the bloody Bashir rule and the return to democratic rule, ‘uncle’ Siddiq and his party and their other political allies strive to maintain what had been achieved through popular sacrifices.
One of such efforts was the 30 June, 2020, massive demonstrations that called for a quick achievement of justice and peace and the completion of the institutions of the civilian government.
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