Sudan police fire teargas as anti-coup protesters stage mass rally
Tens of thousands of Sudanese protesters have rallied to mark three years since the start of mass demonstrations that led to the ousting of the dictator Omar al-Bashir, as fears mount for the country’s democratic transition.
Security forces fired teargas - leaving several wounded, witnesses said – at a huge crowd of protesters near the republican palace in the capital, Khartoum, chanting slogans against the military chief, Gen Abdel Fattah alBurhan, who led a coup on 25 October.
“The people want the downfall of Burhan,” protesters shouted.
Some protesters managed to reach the gates of the palace and the protest’s organisers called on more to join a planned sit-in there after sundown.
The generals had initially detained the prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, for weeks under effective house arrest, but reinstated him on 21 November.
However, the move alienated many of Hamdok’s pro-democracy supporters, who dismissed it as providing a cloak of legitimacy for Burhan’s coup.
Hamdok, who has argued he wants to avoid further bloodshed, warned on Saturday of “the country’s slide toward the abyss” and urged restraint from the protesters. “We’re facing today a sizeable regression in the path of our revolution that threatens the security of the nation, its unity and its stability,” Hamdok said.
Protest organisers have vowed, however, in a key slogan: “No negotiation, no partnership and no legitimacy.”
Previous protests against the military takeover have been forcibly dispersed by the security forces. Across the country, at least 45 people have been killed and scores more wounded, according to the independent Doctors’ Committee.
On Sunday, authorities closed bridges linking Khartoum with its twin city of Omdurman, but large crowds still gathered.
“The numbers are huge and security forces can’t control them,” said Mohamed Hamed, who saw the protests in Omdurman.
For people in Sudan, 19 December has a particular resonance in the country’s history. Not only was it the date in 2018 when thousands launched mass protests that ended Bashir’s three decades in power, but it was also the day in 1955 when Sudanese lawmakers declared independence from British colonial rule.
Following Bashir’s exit, a joint military-civilian transitional government took power, but the troubled alliance was shattered by Burhan’s power grab.
“The coup has put obstacles in the way of the democratic transition and has given the military complete control over politics and the economy,” Ashraf Abdelaziz, the chief editor of the independent al-Jarida newspaper, told AFP.
Sudan’s military dominates lucrative companies specialising in everything from agriculture to infrastructure projects.
The prime minister said last year that 80% of the state’s resources were “outside the finance ministry’s control”.
“The security apparatus has won out over political institutions. The success of a democratic transition rests on political action being the driving force,” Abdelaziz said.
Khaled Omar, a minister in the ousted government, said the coup was a “catastrophe” but also “an opportunity to rectify the deficiencies” of the previous political arrangement with the army.
He warned that anything could happen over the next few months with the military still firmly in power. “If the main political actors don’t get their act together and the military establishment doesn’t distance itself from politics … then all scenarios are on the table,” Omar said.
The 21 November agreement also set July 2023 as the date for Sudan’s first free elections since 1986.
Hamdok said he partnered with the military to “stop the bloodshed” that resulted from its crackdown on protests, and so as not to “squander the gains of the last two years”.
However, those achievements have been unravelling, as the political turbulence in Khartoum rekindles conflicts in Sudan’s far-flung regions that Hamdok’s government had made a priority to resolve.
In a peace deal signed with key rebel groups last year, the main conflict in Darfur subsided, but the region remains awash with weapons and almost 250 people have been killed in ethnic clashes over the past two months.
Some of the Arab militias – which Bashir’s government used as a counterinsurgency force in its infamous campaign in the early 2000s against minority ethnic rebels – have been integrated into the security apparatus, but critics say the deal did nothing to bring them to account.