Many injured, detained in renewed demos across Sudan

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Khartoum and other cities across Sudan on Monday to express their rejection of the military coup d’état of October 25, and the subsequent political agreement, signed by coup leader Gen Abdelfattah El Burhan and Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok.

The authorities pre-empted the Marches of the Millions, called-out by the resistance committees, with a heavy deployment of regular forces. They also closed a number of main roads with barbed wire barricades.

The marches in Khartoum converged from various gathering areas to the Presidential Palace. Police used tear gas on demonstrators in the vicinity of the palace. Several protesters were injured on Street 60 in eastern Khartoum when they were attacked by gangs carrying edged weapons,. Journalists observed dozens of gang members alighting from a large bus on Street 60 before the attacks.

In Omdurman the police detained a large number of protesters in front of the Central Omdurman Police station. The Resistance Committees of the El Safia neighbourhood in Khartoum North said that groups of what they termed ‘bandits’ burned down the El Safia police post after all security forces withdrew.

In El Gedaref in eastern Sudan, protests from the neighbourhoods to the El Gedaref Grand Market were subjected to repression by the regular forces. When the demonstrators arrived at in the market, agents of the General Security Service detained 12 members of resistance committees and other activists, and the march turned into a hit-and-run between the demonstrators and the regular forces.

In Sennar in central Sudan, people in Sennar went out on Monday in a massive march to Mayerno to commemorate the start of the December revolution in the town on December 6, 2018.

The protestors reached the town of Mayerno from the various towns and villages of Sennar state in vehicles and others on foot. A number of demonstrators told Radio Dabanga that the processions all met in the centre of the town and then roamed its streets and the homes of the families of the martyrs before heading to the Mayerno Secondary School for Boys. There they witnessed public discourses, interspersed with national anthems and raising the slogans of the December revolution.

The participants explained that the purpose of the procession is to revive the glorious December revolution that started in the town, as well as to revive its slogans, the most important of which is “O arrogant racists, the whole country is Darfur.” The procession also aimed to send a clear message rejecting the military coup and the El Burhan-Hamdok agreement and that there is “No partnership, No negotiations, No bargaining with the military”.

In Darfur, people demonstrated in El Daein, Nyala, and Zalingei, rejecting the military coup and the El Burhan-Hamdok agreement.