Sudanese professionals lead calls for Omar Al Bashir to resign as president
▶ Medical workers, lawyers, teachers and engineers say their patience has run out
Across Sudan, pharmacists have shut their shops, doctors are only treating emergency cases and dentists are on strike.
The head of the doctors’ union is in prison, as is his deputy and members of the group’s executive committee.
Several more doctors and medical students are in hospital with gunshot wounds.
So far, 40 demonstrators are reported to have been killed and more than 1,000 detained since nationwide anti-government protests began on December 19.
Medical workers, lawyers, teachers and engineers are leading calls for long-standing autocrat Omar Al Bashir to step down.
Yesterday, the Sudanese Professionals Association, an umbrella group of unions and syndicates, organised protests in five cities across Sudan, including two in the Darfur region for the first time.
Protests began after the government cut subsidies and the price of bread rose from one Sudanese pound (about 7 fils) to three.
The government said the cuts were necessary to reduce a deficit after Khartoum lost three quarters of its oil revenue when South Sudan seceded in 2011.
But protesters said the real problem was much broader economic mismanagement and corruption.
Nadreen Rugheem, 28, a doctor from Khartoum, said her government salary was only 1,500 pounds a month and she depended on her family for support. “Other doctors have to exhaust themselves at three to four jobs to survive,” Dr Rugheem said.
In Khartoum yesterday, police fired teargas to disperse protesters who chanted “peace, peace” and “revolution is the people’s choice”.
After security forces firing bullets stormed a hospital in Omdurman last week, organisers expected protests to be met with violence.
Mr Al Bashir said the protests were a foreign plot to sow insecurity and has pleaded with his countrymen for time to resolve the country’s economic woes.
Protesters said their patience had worn out.
“People are fed up and eager for change,” said Samahir Elmubarak, a pharmacist. “Unless this regime is gone, prospects of stability are not on the table.
“Civil wars and genocides have been the regime’s way of staying in power for decades. Corruption along with failed economic policies have made it impossible to expect stability.”
Meanwhile, high military spending that previously went towards putting down rebellions in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile state is now being directed towards crushing protests.
“Sudanese people pay for the government to oppress them,” Dr Rugheem said. “The government is using 70 per cent of our taxes on their military expenditure.”
Officially, the Sudanese government allocated 14 per cent of its spending to defence last year, but economists said military expenditures were often disguised.
“Part of the problem in Sudan is that there’s been too much focus on regime survival at the expense of everything else,” said Murithi Mutiga, deputy project director at the International Crisis Group.
“Little else is left to fund social spending, health care, education and the rest of it.”
This, says the Sudan Doctors’ Syndicate, is why Mr Al Bashir must step down.
In 1985, two weeks of demonstrations and strikes over similar grievances led to a military coup that brought down the 15year government of president Gaafar Al Nimeiry.
Another military coup would be a possibility if Mr Bashir refuses to step down, Mr Mutiga said.
Several doctors are in hospital after being wounded when security troops stormed a hospital last week