On Tuesday, November 25, hundreds of Sudanese asylum seekers marked International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women by demonstrating in Tel-Aviv against the European Union’s lack of action towards Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. This protest comes in the wake of the mass rape of hundreds of women and girls in Darfur by al-Bashir’s soldiers over the past several months.

Hundreds of Sudanese asylum seekers marked International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and marched from Tel-Aviv to Ramat-Gan (Photo: Activestills)

The demonstrators marched from Levinsky Park in south Tel-Aviv to the building which houses the European Union delegation to Israel in Ramat Gan, demanding that the EU intervene in order to stop the rape and ethnic cleansing in Sudan, as well as bring al-Bashir to trial for war crimes. In the lead-up to the protest, Mutasim Ali, one of the leaders of the asylum seekers’ movement in Israel, explained that the demonstrators decided to target the EU because “the UN is in Sudan, but is doing nothing.”