BABY SAID TO BE “HEALTHY”
by Sharon Rondeau
(May 27, 2014) — Just as we were publishing our call to readers to contact their congressmen and the State Department about the imprisonment of Meriam Ibrahim Wani, we learned that Meriam has given birth to a baby girl in her prison cell in Khartoum.
We are calling our congressmen about this new development.
Meriam reportedly told the court which sentenced her to death that “she would rather die than give up her faith.” She was convicted of adultery and apostasy for marrying a Christian by a Sudanese court and is the wife of a U.S. citizen.
Meriam is currently in the Omdurman Federal Women’s Prison in Khartoum.
At 10:24 a.m., we again called the Sudanese Embassy in Washington and were again told that “the press person isn’t in right now.” We then informed the operator that Meriam had given birth to a baby girl and that she, the baby and her son Martin need to be released immediately. “We don’t treat people like that here, and she and her children must be released at once. She is married to an American citizen. Those children are American citizens, and we in the international community do not allow our citizens to be treated that way,” we said angrily, to which the operator said she would convey our comments to the designated individual.
We also told her that we have published three stories on Meriam’s imprisonment today and will continue to publish articles until she and her children are released.
She again directed us to the “contact” form, where we left a second message demanding the release of Meriam and her children.
We contacted our congressional delegation for the second time on Tuesday after learning that the baby was born. With two of them, we mentioned that the children are U.S. citizens, “unlike Obama,” because they were born to a U.S.-citizen father. No argument to the contrary was made by any of the staffers.
The Daily Mail reports that many children imprisoned “with their mothers” have died in the disease-infested jail. The children’s father, Daniel, has seen his family only once since February. Having gone to the U.S. embassy in Khartoum, Daniel told the Daily Mail, “I thought this would be the one place which would help me, but they told me they didn’t have time to do anything. I was upset because now that I am American citizen I thought they would help me. I was threatened. They said ‘well your wife isn’t American, so we can’t help.’ I felt disgusted. My home is in America and still they won’t help. It’s getting uglier and it’s not going in the right direction.”