(Khartoum) Sudanese hostile to military power blocked roads in Khartoum on Friday to protest against an outburst of violence the day before which left five dead and sparked a wave of condemnations.
Thursday, the repression of the authorities led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, author of a coup at the end of October, reached a new level.
First, the security forces cut off mobile internet, all telephone communications – including calls from abroad – and the bridges connecting Khartoum to its suburbs, Omdurman and Khartoum-North.
In the streets of the capital and its periphery, the security forces fired tear gas and live ammunition at tens of thousands of supporters of civil power in a country almost always under the rule of the army since its independence. 65 years ago.
At the same time, officers arrested journalists and attacked the office of the Arab satellite channel al-Arabiya.
After two months of a crackdown that left 53 people dead, the violence was concentrated in Omdurman on Thursday, where four demonstrators were fatally shot in the head or chest, according to a pro-democracy doctors’ union .
A fifth succumbed to his injuries on Friday after being shot on Thursday in central Khartoum.
Irreconcilable camps
The union also accuses security forces of blocking ambulances and forcibly removing at least one seriously injured from one of them, as numerous videos posted on social media on Friday show men in uniform beating protesters. with sticks.
This violence, but also the attacks against the media – including two Saudi channels, yet a traditional ally of the army in Sudan – aroused the indignation of Europeans, but also of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and the United States. UN.
The street, it keeps repeating that it will not bend despite the violence.
On Friday again, demonstrators blocked the roads of Khartoum-Nord and Bourri, a bustling district in the east of Khartoum, with stones, branches and tires on fire, an AFP journalist noted.
Above all, say the demonstrators, the political initiatives have fizzled out and the soldiers must “return to the barracks”, as they had promised in 2019 by overthrowing the dictator Omar al-Bashir.
“The demonstrations are a waste of energy and time” which will not lead to “any political solution”, retorted Friday to the state agency an adviser to General Burhane, whose mandate has been extended by two years with the putsch of October 25.
On November 21, Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, also head of the army, reinstated civilian Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok, whom he arrested during the coup.
Both then signed an agreement which was to put the democratic transition back on track and reassure the international community, which cut the aid tap after the putsch.
“International solidarity”
But Thursday’s deaths, dozens of gunshot wounds, attacks on journalists from Asharq and al-Arabiya, as well as the total cut-off of communications have raised questions about the intentions of the new power dominated by the military.
And this, to the bosom of power.
Civilian with no militant past, Abdel Baqi Abdel Qader, recently appointed by General Burhane to the Sovereignty Council – the highest authority in the transition – to replace a supporter of civil power, has announced that he wants to resign.
“I requested an appointment […] to General Burhane to present my resignation to him […] because of the violence against the demonstrators, ”he announced in a public message.
The American Blinken, he said he was “very disturbed” by the violence on Thursday, while the Western embassies protested against the deaths, the communication cut and attacks on the media.
“We urgently need international solidarity to call for an end to the bloody repression in Sudan,” echoed the Sudanese Communist Party, pleading in particular for the Resistance Committees.
These small groups which organize the demonstrations are surely those which have been hit the hardest since the coup: every day in each district, they announce new arrests or disappearances in their ranks.
The Sudanese police, for its part, reported 297 wounded “including 49 police officers”, while accusing some demonstrators of having sought to “transform a peaceful parade into clashes with security”.