ABOUT THE THINKER

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Al Khatim Adlan

About

Al Khatim Adlan

Based on the article by John Akec

Learn more about Al Khatim Adlan

Al Khatim Adlan was born in Umdaka Al Jaleen village in Gezira in Central Sudan in 1948. He studied at Medani Secondary School and University of Khartoum Faculty of Arts where he majored in Philosophy. As a student in University of Khartoum he shone as a serious political activist, thinker, philosopher, and intellectual of the highest caliber.

At a very young age, Al Khatim joined the Sudan Communist Party while he was in secondary school, and rose to be a member of its Central Committee. He was also a fierce advocate of voluntary unity amongst Sudanese based on universal values of equality that recognises Sudan’s religious, cultural, and ethnic diversity.

Al Khatim left Sudan and headed for the UK to escape persecution in 1994 where he was reunited with his family in London. Having tried to initiate radical reforms within the Communist Party without success, Al-Khatim and a number of his colleagues resigned from the party in the same year. In 1996, he founded with others the Sudan New Democratic Forces Movement (HAQ).

He summarized his quitting the Communist Party saying: “I realized in the early 1990s how the Marxist project for social change had been proven wrong by history. I have not chosen to fall back on the 30 years I have spent serving that project. I was not paralyzed by fear to form or construct a new way of thinking, and create a new identity. I have not cared for what people will say, dead or living. I declared it to myself and then I went public. I went back to the roots of all our projects – the interests of the people and their right to live in dignity, peace and justice”
He is described by those who knew him closely as a faithful patriot, a true leader who fought on the side of oppressed, and who never walked away from a battle in the defense of the rights of the marginalized, but always willing to sacrifice his own life for the sake of the people, the nation, and his principles.”