(Khartoum) A Sudanese man was killed Sunday in the repression of anti-coup demonstrations, doctors said, just as the UN envoy for human rights begins a visit to the country mired in violence since the October coup.
Posted at 2:14 p.m.
As thousands of demonstrators marched in Khartoum, a 51-year-old man was mowed down by “a bullet in the chest”, reports a union of doctors, which lists 82 dead since General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane’s coup. October 25.
It is about a patient who “was coming out of an amputation” and was trying to escape the “tear gas” fired “in the hospital” where he was.
Security forces also fired tear gas canisters and used their water cannons against protesters in Khartoum and its suburbs, AFP journalists noted.
And this even as the UN human rights expert for Sudan, the Senegalese Adama Dieng, begins his first visit to the country since the military coup.
He met on Sunday the permanent envoy of the UN in Khartoum, Volker Perthes, and must then meet several leaders as well as civil society actors to try to shed light on the violence.
The military recognizes that some of its officers opened fire, but claims to have never given the order, while in return accusing the demonstrators of having stabbed a police general to death in January.
The arrival of Mr. Dieng, initially scheduled for January, had been rejected by the Sudanese authorities, criticized by the international community for the bloody repression and the raids which continue in militant circles.
More than a hundred parade organizers, demonstrators or politicians are currently behind bars and several of them have recently gone on hunger strike to denounce the “ill-treatment” they say they suffer in detention.
Mr. Dieng already said in January that he was “very worried about the deterioration of human rights in the country”.
This campaign, however, does not seem to start the mobilization in the streets, where the crowd goes down regularly to boo General Burhane and call on the soldiers to “return to the barracks”.
“We are ready to demonstrate for a whole year,” said Thouyaba Ahmed, a 24-year-old student who is demonstrating in Khartoum.
A sign that the country remains divided, the supporters of Omar el-Bashir, overthrown in 2019 under pressure from the street, were them in the street on Sunday.
Dozens of them gathered outside the Khartoum court in support of Ibrahim Ghandour, former foreign minister of the ousted dictator.
The man, on hunger strike for a month with several former officials of the Bashir regime, was there for a new hearing in his trial for a failed coup in July 2020.