Sudan coup: 36 teachers still detained after Khartoum protest

Dozens of teachers were detained on Sunday when military forces stormed a protest at Sudan’s Ministry of Education in Khartoum. The teachers were demanding the replacement of ministry employees with links to the deposed Al Bashir regime, with administrators appointed after the revolution.

In an interview with Radio Dabanga, Duriya Mohamed Babiker, a leader of the Khartoum Teachers’ Committee, said that 36 teachers who participated in Sunday’s protest in Khartoum are still in detention.

She explained that 58 women teachers were released late at night after being detained during the protest, and that “the military forces stormed the ministry’s buildings by force on Sunday and dealt with the protest with excessive violence and fired tear gas”.

She said that she was among the women detainees who were held in a large cell in the Mogran section before being released without taking any legal measures. The committee posted on its Facebook page that one of the teachers suffered a miscarriage after her arrest.

In the South Darfur capital Nyala, the authorities held two teachers from the offices of the Ministry of Education on Sunday, at a protest against the appointment of Prof Mohamed El Amin Mustafa as director of the ministry.

The South Darfur Teachers’ Committee had decided to organise a sit-in inside the Ministry on Sunday until the return of the former Director-General, however security services rushed to close the ministry gates and prevented entry.