The journey to freedom: escaping SudanThe journey to freedom: escaping Sudan
Part one of a two-part feature chronicling a Jasper family's struggle to start a new life
by Dustin Walker
Wednesday December 15, 2004
The Ausman family pose for a photo in the kitchen of their Jasper apartment. (From left, front row) Two-year-old Moneer, five-year-old Moram, and their mother Salwa. (Back row) Ten-year-old Munya and the children’s father Khaled.
Dustin Walker photo
Jasper Booster — They had to escape.
Leaving family and friends behind, Khaled and Salwa Ausman took their seven-month-old daughter, Munya, and prepared to flee east from their war-torn home of Sudan, Africa to the bordering country of Eritrea as refugees.
The government had Khaled in its crosshairs. After numerous demands by the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation to stop organizing and fighting for the re-establishment of democracy in Sudan, Khaled knew he wouldn’t get another warning from the secret police.
He watched as his friends disappeared or were brutally beaten by government agents after they refused to halt their democratic efforts. And if Khaled didn’t stop, there was no doubt in his mind that he would be next.
“Any car that stopped by our house in Sudan, my mom and wife would write down the licence plate number - I could disappear at any time,” he says while sitting in his living room, sipping Sudanese coffee and watching his youngest child, two-year-old Moneer, fumble with a brightly-coloured toy.
Khaled and his family now live on the third-floor of a Jasper apartment building, far from the turmoil of Sudan or the suffering of an ill-supplied United Nations refugee camp in Eritrea.
After years of hardship they’ve struggled against the odds to come to Canada, where they are quite content to live and work in the Rocky Mountains without fear and without being ruled by a military leader.
“The democracy in Canada is real democracy,” says Khaled, a broad-shouldered, mild-mannered man with a kind face and an intense demeanor.
But when the Ausmans left Sudan 10 years ago, their democracy had slipped away.
Starting over
On June 30, 1989, Col. Umar Hassan Ahmad al Bashir overthrew elected Sudan Prime Minister Sadiq al Mahdi and established the Revolutionary Command Council for National Salvation to rule Sudan.
The military had the country in its grasp.
“The worst thing I hate in the world is military rule or military government,” says Khaled. “They just want to kill.”
So Khaled and other like-minded citizens began organizing in an attempt to spur democratic reforms. They met secretly at the university where Khaled had studied economics, and discussed possible plans to aid in the re-establishment of democracy.
Spreading the word was a considerable challenge, as the secret government police were on the lookout for dissension.
But Khaled had music and the press on his side. He drew political cartoons and wrote columns and poems for major newspapers criticizing the government before these publications were controlled by the revolutionaries.
He was also an accomplished composer, having already made a name for himself by writing songs for some of the most popular Sudanese singers. However, being in the spotlight is a double-edged sword, and the revolutionaries knew Khaled well.
Eventually, government agents became too familiar with the meetings of democratic reformers so they had to split up into smaller groups. A representative of each group would meet to exchange ideas, but that method left them open to infiltration by government spies posing as their members.
In 1995, the Ausmans were tired of living in fear. Khaled had already been forced to sign several commitments not to continue his actions against the government. He was creeping towards being imprisoned in a jail unknown to his family.
“But I couldn’t stop, and if they caught me another time...they said this is my last chance.”
It was a chance Khaled wasn’t willing to take.
With the help of a friend, he arranged to have his family taken in a Land Rover by a special driver through the Sudan-Eritrea border where he would ask for amnesty. He paid the driver $2,000 U.S. for the two-hour trip that would carry them across deserts and rocky terrain in a detour to avoid government border guards.
The fear of being caught or stranded in a remote area with a young child to care for weighed heavily on the couple.
They made it, but the young family would only encounter worse hardships and turmoil as refugees in an unstable country.
The United Nations camp they lived in for three years would form the backdrop for some of the Ausmans’ most difficult memories.
“The refugee camp? It was hard. It was so hard there,” says Salwa.
-See next week's Booster for the conclusion of this special two-part feature.