Sudan opposition suspends negotiations after Khartoum massacre

The opposition Alliance for Freedom and Change (AFC) has decided to cancel negotiations with Sudan’s Transitional Military Council (TMC) following the massacre at the General Command of the Sudan Armed Forces on Monday morning, until the overthrow of the regime. The AFC says it will instead opt for another general strike and civil disobedience actions.

In separate statements, the TMC and the AMC announced that they were both suspending all negotiations. The chairmen of the TMC, Lt Gen Abdelfattah El Burhan has called for snap elections within nine months.

At least 35 people are now known to have died as a result of attacks by paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and security forces on the sit-in in front of the army command in Khartoum and protestors in Omdurman on Monday, according the Sudan Doctors Central Committee.

Negotiations suspended

The AFC said in a statement on Monday, that it has decided to stop all political contact with the TMC and suspended the negotiations as they consider “the junta no longer eligible to negotiate with the Sudanese people”.

It holds the leaders and members of the military junta criminally responsible for the blood that has been shed since April 11 and will work to bring them to fair trial before a fair and impartial judiciary in the inevitably victorious Sudan.

Civil disobedience

Khalid Omar, a leading member of the AFC, told Radio Dabanga that the option now available for the opposition is civil disobedience until the current regime is toppled and that the Sudanese people are inevitably victorious.

Khalid said that negotiations with the TMC have ended irrevocably with the bloodshed that flooded the country and the crimes committed by the military junta, which missed many opportunities in order to take the country to safety and achieve the aspirations of the people.

Flights cancelled

On Monday, internal and external flights stopped at Khartoum International Airport coinciding with the announcement of the Sudanese Pilots Association of an all-out civil disobedience without any exception to any flights that existed and coincided Egypt Air in protest against the massacre of the sit-in to Khartoum on Monday. The flights scheduled for Monday were cancelled “given the current events in Sudan”.

The Sudanese Professionals Association called on people in Sudan to go out to the streets and peaceful demonstration everywhere with the closure of roads, bridges and ports in the yards, and initiate civil disobedience and the end of public life to bring down the security committee to the complement the uprising.

Political parties, civil society organisations, armed movements and also the Sudan Revolutionary Front (a coalition of rebel groups), condemned the massacre in separate statements.

They called for escalating the struggle and taking to the streets and entering into a strike and a general civil disobedience to topple the military junta, with support for a cessation of negotiations and contacts with the military junta.

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