The new military power in Sudan on Thursday restored the Internet connection, cut off since the putsch of October 25, a first step towards reopening after a crackdown that has already killed 39 people, including five teenagers.
Since General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane’s coup d’état, the United Nations, Western ambassadors, activists and even Sudanese judges have been calling for the restoration of the Internet. Deaf to these calls, the generals had even reinforced their lead on Wednesday by cutting the phone.
But at the end of an unprecedented outburst of violence, the day Wednesday ended in the death of 15 demonstrators, killed by the police, and dozens of gunshot wounds, the new power loosened the vice.
After re-establishing telephone communications overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, he reconnected the Internet in the afternoon.
While the NGO Netblocks noted that the Internet was now “partially restored”, activists on social networks called on the Sudanese to upload – using a virtual private network – videos and information on the protests of the day before.
Because Wednesday will remain for the antiputsch the day of the “massacre”. In Khartoum-Nord alone, a suburb linked to Khartoum by a bridge over the Nile, at least 11 demonstrators were killed by security forces who were targeting, according to a union of pro-democracy doctors, “the head, neck or chest. “.
The mobilized forces, which demand a civilian government in a country living under the rule of the army almost continuously for 65 years, now have a stronghold: Khartoum-North.
Elsewhere in the capital and across Sudan, the parades dispersed before nightfall from Wednesday to Thursday, but in North Khartoum, the antiputsch continued to defend their barricades on Thursday by responding to tear gas fire with stone throws.
” We will continue “
The European Union denounced the “senseless unacceptable killings” on Wednesday, while Clément Voule, UN rapporteur for freedom of association, called on “the international community to put pressure on Sudan to immediately end the repression “.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also condemned the Sudanese military crackdown on protesters on Thursday. “The military must respect the rights of civilians to assemble peacefully and express their opinions,” Blinken said at a press conference in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, saying he was “deeply concerned” by the violence. from yesterday.
“We continue to support the demand of the Sudanese people for the reestablishment of the civilian-led transition,” he added, which includes the relocation to power of Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok.
Despite the violence, American diplomats say they remain hopeful in the resolution of this crisis.