‘Reject the false power’ Marches of the Millions met with heavy repression in Sudan

The Marches of Millions launched in Khartoum’s cities and Wad Madani, capital of El Gezira, yesterday under the slogan ‘Reject the False Power’. Protesters were again confronted with excessive violence.

Government forces faced the protesters in Khartoum and Omdurman with tear gas and stun grenades, in vast amounts.

Demonstrators told Radio Dabanga that the authorities had closed El Mak Nimir Bridge between Khartoum and Khartoum North (Bahri) in the early morning.

The forces prevented the protesters in Khartoum from reaching El Gasr (Palace) Street, close to the Republican Palace in Khartoum, and the authorities took similar measures to confront protesters in the vicinity of the Parliament building in Omdurman.  

Sudan's resistance committees have been protesting under the slogan of "No Negotiations, No Agreements, No Bargaining” (with the military), dubbed the three nos. They reject the framework agreement that was signed on Monday.

The committees have been against any form of collaboration with the military institution. Many families of martyrs, pro-democracy protesters killed by security forces also fear for an agreement that might allow the military to escape accountability.

“Safe areas”

Resistance committees in Khartoum described efforts by the authorities to define safe demonstration areas as “a new dictatorship of the forces that signed the framework agreement”.

Mohamed Anwar, the official spokesperson for the Khartoum Resistance Committees, stressed that the right to demonstrate is guaranteed to everyone, and should count everywhere, without any demarcation of safe or unsafe locations.

Emergency Lawyer Osman El Basri told Radio Dabanga that “determining routes and places for peaceful demonstrations, as reported in some statements of groups that signed the framework agreement, represents restrictions on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly and contradicts the [constitutional] document on which the framework agreement was built”.