Protests against military power in Sudan: 2 protesters killed
Two demonstrators were killed Monday in Khartoum during new parades to demand the fall of the new military power and the end of the raids, which continue to decimate the ranks of opponents of the putsch.
Demonstration in Khartoum on February 14, 2022.
AFP
Since the October 25 coup by army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, protesters have been demanding justice for the dozens of people killed by the new regime’s crackdown.
The 81st and last victim on Monday was killed by a “live ammunition in the chest” fired by “Sudanese security forces”, a few hours after the announcement of the death of another protester, shot “in the neck and in the chest”, according to a union of pro-democracy doctors. The Sudanese police said in a statement in the evening that at least 102 officers had been “seriously injured”, including one “wounded in the foot by a bullet”.
This week, the demonstrations – which also took place in Darfur (west) or in the east coast – also had as their motto the release of prisoners of conscience, while the authorities have just returned behind the bars two former senior civilian leaders of the country. The latter shared power with General Burhane until the putsch.
New incarcerations
“We demand the release of members of the Resistance Committees and politicians unjustly arrested on the basis of false charges,” Khaled Mohamed told AFP, marching in Omdurman, a northwestern suburb of the capital.
The day before, Mohammed al-Fekki, a former member of the Sovereign Council, the highest authority of the transition in Sudan, was returned to prison. Before him, last week, former minister Khalid Omer Yousif was also arrested.
The Resistance Committees — neighborhood groupings of activists who call for demonstrations and organize the fight against military power — are now the backbone of opposition in Sudan, where political parties struggle to defend their partnership with the army before the putsch.
Very active, they are in the sights of the authorities and nearly four months after the coup, “the number of people detained arbitrarily and without charge has exceeded one hundred”, according to the Association of Sudanese Professionals (APS), iron spearhead of the popular uprising that overthrew dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019. The APS says it is worried about the fate of these activists, politicians, academics or simple demonstrators aged “16 to 60 years old” and some of whom suffer from “health problems”.
Hunger-strike
To protest against their conditions of detention, several of them, “revolutionaries, politicians and members of resistance committees (…) detained without an arrest warrant” according to a union of pro-democracy doctors, began a hunger strike in Soba prison on the outskirts of the capital.
The never-ending raids continue to arouse the indignation of the international community, which accuses the generals of playing a double game: on the one hand, they accept the idea of national dialogue proposed by the UN, on the On the other, they have opponents arrested — sometimes in the middle of a political meeting.
You found an error?Please let us know.