Australia’s Sudanese community has urged the government to grant emergency visas to people fleeing the worsening conflict in Sudan, calling for a response akin to that which followed the invasion of Ukraine last year.
The Australian government confirmed an RAAF rescue flight carrying 36 Australian citizens left Sudan overnight Tuesday, landing in Cyprus Wednesday morning.
The flight “brings to 191 [the number of] Australians that we’ve assisted or have been able to secure passage out of the country since the crisis began”, the foreign minister, Penny Wong, said on Wednesday morning.
“Unfortunately we still have Australians on the ground, and we’ll continue to engage through our consular team with the Australians who are on the ground, and I urge people to make sure they are registered.”
Guardian Australia understands there are fewer than 100 Australians left inside Sudan who have registered their presence with the Australian government.
But many Sudanese people with family and community links to Australia remain stranded inside Sudan, with few options for escape.
“A lot of people evacuated from Sudan came with the fear and guilt of leaving loved ones behind,” said Sudanese Australian Mohamed Semra in Melbourne. “Australia could issue emergency visas, to help people escape and to allow families to reunite.”
Semra’s two Australian citizen brothers and their wives remain trapped in Sudan, having fled the chaos of Khartoum for a safer city. One of Semra’s sisters-in-law is heavily pregnant: the group is seeking avenues to leave, but options are rapidly narrowing.
Reaching evacuation points such as the Port of Sudan is increasingly difficult. The cost of tickets on buses has risen, “sometimes up to $1,000”, Semra said: there are fuel shortages, and many roads are now too dangerous to travel.
Semra, a Victorian Young Australian of the Year finalist,said for Australia’s Sudanese diaspora, contact with relatives in Sudan remained inconsistent and the long silences were troubling, as news out of Khartoum revealed an increasingly volatile situation.
“Everything is chaotic, it changes all the time. Sometimes it’s easy to communicate with loved ones, but then another minute you can’t reach them.
“I’ve heard from some Australians here, they still haven’t been able to speak with their families, and it’s been three weeks now.”
Fierce street fighting, including the use of heavy weaponry and artillery fire, has consumed central Khartoum, and hospitals are being regularly bombarded.
Semra said Australia and the international community needed to push the competing military factions in the current conflict to agree to a “complete halt to hostilities”.
“Our memories are still fresh from the genocide in Darfur; we know how bad things can get in conflict, we don’t want to reach that point.
“This conflict serves the interests of no one except the high-ranking in the military factions and militias. It’s our most vulnerable who are going to suffer the most in a country that was already suffering so much.”
Semra said Sudan stood on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe without international intervention.
“Australia needs to work with the international community to create humanitarian corridors, to ensure vital food and water and medicine get into the country, to people who really need it. And they need to work to help those people who need to leave, to find safety.”
After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Morrison government offered special visa arrangements to Ukrainians displaced by conflict, including streamlined visa processing times, relaxed application conditions, and options for extended temporary stay.
In an open letter to the foreign minister, Sudanese Australian Razaz Elsayed urged Australia to implement a specific humanitarian visa regime to assist Sudanese people displaced by the fighting.
“As we begin the repatriation of most Australians back home … our next objective should be to expedite emergency visas for families and provide humanitarian visas for those affected by this crisis,” Elsayed said.
“The same generosity extended by the Australian government to the 4,100 Ukrainians granted humanitarian visas early last year, should be extended to the nationals of Sudan and their immediate family members or individuals with connections to Australia.”
Jana Favero from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre said Australia needed an established humanitarian response to international crises.
“We shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel every time there is a global crisis. While there are serious difficulties evacuating people from war zones, Australia’s humanitarian program over the past decade has systematically reduced, as has its capacity to respond to events like this.
The Department of Home Affairs said Sudanese Australians who have family in Sudan without a visa for Australia should consult the department’s website for visa options available to them.
Sudanese temporary visa holders already in Australia who need to extend their stay can apply to have their “no further stay” condition waived through the department.
A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the Australian government remained in contact with Australians in Sudan, and was “providing direct advice to them on departure options from Sudan”.
Australians still in the country have been advised it is not safe to travel to the Wadi Sayyidna airfield north of Khartoum, and that Australia’s evacuation focus is on ferries leaving Port Sudan for Jeddah, across the Red Sea, in Saudi Arabia.
