UN calls for army to back down as Khartoum protests continue
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres yesterday called on Sudan’s generals to reverse their takeover of the country, as protesters kept up a campaign against the junta.
Democracy campaigners manned barricades on the streets of Khartoum for a seventh day.
A day earlier, tens of thousands staged their largest protest in the capital since the military dismissed the transitional government and arrested civilian officials last week.
Mr Guterres said the military leaders should take heed of the continuing protests and return to the joint military-civilian rule established after dictator Omar Al Bashir was deposed two years ago.
“Time to go back to the legitimate constitutional arrangements,” he wrote on Twitter.
The UN envoy for Sudan, Volker Perthes, said he met Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who is under house arrest in the capital, yesterday.
“We discussed options for mediation and the way forward for Sudan. I will continue these efforts with other Sudanese stakeholders,” Mr Perthes said.
Mr Guterres expressed concern about violence against protesters on Saturday, calling for perpetrators to be held accountable.
At least three people were shot dead when security forces fired at protesters in Omdurman, a city near Khartoum.
A doctors’ union said more than 110 people were injured by live rounds, tear gas and beatings in Omdurman and elsewhere in Sudan.
Twelve people have been killed since the army took over a week ago, said the Sudan Doctors’ Committee and campaigners. More than 280 have been injured in the past week.
Gen Abdel Fattah Al Burhan, who led the takeover, said it was necessary to prevent a civil war, amid growing divisions among political groups.
But the army seized control of the state less than a month before the general was due to hand some of his powers to a civilian official.
Gen Al Burhan said the transition to democracy would continue and he would install a government of technocrats soon, with the aim of holding elections in July 2023.
But the pro-democracy movement fears the military has no intention of easing its grip.
The UN mission for Sudan is working to ease dialogue between military and civilian leaders.
A Sudanese military official said that a UN-supported national committee began separate meetings last week with Mr Hamdok and Gen Burhan to find common ground.
US President Joe Biden has called the army’s action a “grave setback”, while the African Union has suspended Sudan’s membership for the “unconstitutional” takeover.
The World Bank and US have frozen aid to Sudan, a move that will hit hard in a country in a dire economic crisis.
Most shops in Khartoum are shut and many government employees refuse to work.
Sudan has enjoyed only rare democratic interludes since independence in 1956 and there have been decades of civil war.