Security agents thwart anti-election forum in Port Sudan

Opposition leaders were prevented from addressing an anti-election forum in Port Sudan on Monday. On Sunday, two activists of the Leave! campaign were detained in Khartoum.

Officers of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) denied the president of the Sudanese Coalition Party, Abdelaziz Khaled, and the co-vice president of the National Umma Party, Maryam El Sadig El Mahdi, access to the Red Sea University in the Red Sea state capital, where the forum was to take place.

The opposition leaders told reporters in the eastern Sudanese port city on Monday morning that they will continue campaigning. They stressed the need for cancelation of the election and the formation of a transitional government, and called for an inclusive national dialogue.

The anti-election Leave! campaign is an initiative of the parties that signed the Sudan Appeal in the Ethiopian capital on 3 December 2014. In the two-page political communiqué, the allied opposition forces call for the ending of the civil wars in the country and the rebuilding of Sudan based on democratic principles. They agreed that if a peaceful regime-change cannot be achieved by a broad national dialogue, it should be enforced by a popular uprising.

The campaign in Port Sudan was launched on Sunday, at the premises of the Sudanese Communist Party. Speakers pointed to the marginalisation of the eastern Sudanese region, the ignorance and diseases the eastern Sudanese continue to suffer from. They also demanded those involved in the killing of more than 20 Beja demonstrators in January 2005 to be brought to justice.

Signatures

In southern Khartoum’s district of Salama, two activists of the anti-election campaign were detained by NISS agents on Sunday evening.

The spokesman for the National Consensus Forces opposition alliance, Bakri Yousef, told Radio Dabanga that the two activists were held when they were collecting signatures in support of the Leave! campaign.