Clashes as protesters head to Bashir’s palace in Khartoum
cairo — Police used tear gas and fired in the air on Tuesday to disperse thousands of protesters attempting to march on the presidential palace to demand that Omar Bashir, Sudan’s president of 29 years, step down, according to activists and video clips posted online.
The clips purported to show crowds of several hundred each gathering on side roads and headed towards the palace on the bank of the Blue Nile in the heart of Khartoum. They sang patriotic songs and chanted “freedom,” “peaceful, peaceful against the thieves” and “The people want to bring down the regime.” The latter was the most popular slogan of the 2010 and 2011 Arab Spring revolts.
Large numbers of security forces were deployed across much of Khartoum on Tuesday in anticipation of the march, with soldiers riding in all-terrain vehicles. Police fired in the air, used tear gas and hit demonstrators with batons to disperse them, only for the crowds to assemble again and try and continue their march in pitched battles. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The protest was called by an umbrella of independent professional unions and supported by the country’s largest political parties, Umma and Democratic Unionist. The organisers want to submit a petition demanding that Bashir, in power since he seized power in a 1989 military coup, step down. Tuesday’s march follows nearly a week of protests initially sparked by rising prices and shortages of food and fuel, but which later escalated into calls for Bashir to go. The Sudanese leader was in the Al Jazeera region south of Khartoum on a previously scheduled visit on Tuesday. Live TV coverage showed him addressing supporters there in a rally and the country’s state news agency said he inaugurated a road and a girls’ school there.
In an address in which he frequently quoted verses from the Holy Quran, Bashir, who is an Islamist, blamed the country’s economic woes on international sanctions and enemies of Sudan who don’t want it to progress.
The petition presented by the protesters demands that the general-turned-president hand over power to a “transitional government of technocrats with a mandate agreed upon by all segments of Sudanese society.”
“We are asserting that we will continue to exercise all popular and peaceful options, including general strike and civil disobedience, to bring down the regime,” it warned. —