The Sudanese security forces fired, this Thursday morning, November 18, new tear gas canisters at anti-coup protesters in Khartoum, the day after the bloodiest day since the October 25 coup with 15 dead. In the morning of Thursday, when telephone communications had been restored after a cut during the crackdown, the security forces again tried to disperse dozens of demonstrators, who remained at their barricades in the northern suburbs of the capital. At least eleven people, including a woman, were mowed down on Wednesday 17th by bullets fired, according to a union of pro-democracy doctors, by the security forces who were targeting “head, neck or torso”. In total, since the putsch, 39 people, including three teenagers, have been killed and hundreds injured.
Sudden disconnection
After more than three weeks of internet shutdown, the brutal disconnection of 45 million Sudanese has started the mobilization : where the demonstrators were in the tens of thousands on October 30 and November 13, they were only thousands on November 17. Facing them, the security forces were just as numerous, blocking the bridges connecting Khartoum to its suburbs and the avenues usually walked by protesters. The very people who, in 2019, said no to dictator Omar al-Bashir and now to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, author of the putsch. November 17, Soha, a 42-year-old protester, reported a “fierce repression” with “continuous firing of tear gas and deafening grenades”.
“Crimes against humanity”
In the country where more than 250 demonstrators were killed in the revolt that ended 30 years of dictatorship in 2019, one of the spearheads of the uprising at the time, the Association of Sudanese Professionals, denounced from “crimes against humanity”. For this movement, despite everything, “the slaughter” from 17 only “reinforce the slogans : no negotiations, no partnership, no compromise “ with the army, chanted since October 25 in the streets of Sudan despite hundreds of arrests of activists, journalists or ordinary passers-by. The police, she claims not to open fire and state television has announced the opening of an investigation into the demonstrators killed. However, the doctors’ union accused the security forces of chasing them into hospitals and of firing tear gas canisters at the wounded and ambulances.
American mediation
On October 25, General Burhane reshuffled the cards of a shaky transition for months. He rounded up almost all the civilians in power and put an end to the sacred union formed in 2019 by civilians and soldiers. While no political solution seems in sight, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has announced his readiness to support Sudan again if “the army puts the train (of the transition) back on track”. In Khartoum in recent days, the US Deputy Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee shuttled between Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok under house arrest and General Burhane, in an attempt to revive the democratic transition. But the army chief doesn’t seem to want to back down : he recently reappointed at the head of the highest institution of the transition, the Sovereignty Council. And renewed all its military or pro-army members, replacing only four members who support an entirely civilian power with other civilians, apolitical.
While the military is slow to name the new authorities they have been promising for days, Molly Phee has pleaded for the return of Abdallah Hamdok. General Burhane, he continues to promise elections in 2023 and assures that he has acted only to “correct the trajectory of the revolution”.