Sudan Protests: Police Orders Firm Dispersal Of Demonstrations
(Huff Post World) Sudan’s top police chief ordered his forces Saturday to quell “firmly and immediately” anti-government demonstrations that have entered their seventh day, while opposition groups reported a security crackdown on their leading members. Gen. Hashem Othman al-Hussein told his aides to confront the “riots … and the groups behind them,” the official SUNA news agency reported. It was a rare acknowledgement by the state media of demonstrations that have been concentrated in Khartoum but have also spread to a provincial capital. Protesters are rejecting a government austerity plan that slashed subsidies and doubled the price of fuel and food. But they also appear to be inspired by Arab uprisings in neighboring Egypt and Libya and are demanding the ouster of longtime Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Some videos shared on social websites show protesters chanting: “We won’t be ruled by a dictator.” Sudan’s Ummah party said in a text message that at least three of its members were detained, including a member of its political bureau, Adam Gereir. Siddique Tawer, a member of the Sudanese Baath party, said the party’s spokesman Mohammed Diaa Eddin was arrested at his home early Saturday. The arrest raids and new police directives are a sign of nervousness, Tawer said. “They are afraid of street action. They are trying to terrorize people,” he said by telephone from al-Ubbayid, provincial capital of Northern Kordofan to the southwest. “They can’t stop these protests. They are legitimate, against the government’s economic policies, corruption and repression of freedoms.” State-run radio had said earlier that 150 protesters attacked a group of policemen overnight, damaging one police vehicle and forcing the police to use tear gas to disperse them. Spokesman for Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party Badr Eddin Ahmed Ibrahim meanwhile dismissed the protests, saying they were largely led by university students and were used by opposition parties to agitate against the government.
Sudan protests spread after Friday prayers
(Reuters) Sudanese security forces clashed with anti-government protesters across Khartoum on Friday in the most widespread demonstrations to have broken out in the capital since officials unveiled tough spending cuts earlier this week. The demonstrations, in their sixth day, expanded beyond the core of student activists and spread into several neighborhoods that had been quiet as hundreds of Sudanese took to the streets after Friday prayers. The smell of tear gas hung in the air and broken rocks covered streets as riot police and demonstrators faced off throughout the city, witnesses said. Demonstrators burned tires and security forces used batons to disperse them. In the first significant demonstration of the day, about 400 to 500 protesters began chanting “the people want to overthrow the regime” as they left the Imam Abdel Rahman mosque in the suburb of Omdurman, activists and two witnesses said. As security forces gathered, the protesters called for the police to join them, chanting: “Oh police, oh police, how much is your salary and how much is a pound of sugar?” The police fired tear gas and then used batons as they clashed with the protesters, who threw rocks back at them. Witnesses said men in civilian clothes also attacked the demonstrators. Police were not immediately available for comment. At one protest in Omdurman, about 100 people chanted “Freedom, freedom” until police fired tear gas to disperse them. Police also fired tear gas to break up separate protests in the central neighborhoods of Burri, Khartoum Three and Al-Daim, which had previously been quiet, witnesses said. Protesters burned tires on the streets and blocked traffic and threw rocks at security forces, they said.
Anti-regime protests sweep Sudan’s capital
(AP) Riot police fired tear gas and civilians armed with machetes and swords attacked protesters during five days of demonstrations sweeping Khartoum demanding ouster of Sudan’s autocratic ruler, a Sudanese opposition leader said Thursday. Saata Ahmed al-Haj, head of the opposition Sudanese Commission for Defense of Freedoms and Rights, said that hundreds of protesters have been detained over the past five days. He said they were later released but were badly mistreated. Al-Haj said security forces shaved off the protesters’ hair, stripped them naked, flogged them and then left them outside in the scorching sun for hours. “I am under house arrest along with several opposition members, and security forces are encircling the place,” he told The Associated Press over the phone. “Our ‘offense’ is we are searching for freedom, and this is a crime in Sudan,” he said. A government austerity plan slashing subsidies and doubling price of fuel and food set off the protests. President Omar al-Bashir has said the measures are necessary to pay for his country’s conflict with South Sudan and to replace Sudan’s oil revenues. He said Sudan no longer exports oil. The demonstrations started on Saturday night at the University of Khartoum. Students protesting transportation fare hikes took to the streets outside the downtown campus, where security forces fired tear gas and rounded up dozens of them. Since then, Khartoum has been the scene of daily protests, spilling out to different of the capital. Echoing calls heard in Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, protesters chanted, “The people demand to bring down the regime.” Salama el-Wardani, an Egyptian journalist who works for the Bloomberg news agency, told the Egyptian daily al-Masry al-Youm that she was detained and interrogated for five hours along with a Sudanese activist, Maha al-Senousi. The two were arrested while covering protests at Khartoum University on Thursday.
Sudan austerity announcement sparks widespread protests
(Guardian) Protests have taken place in Khartoum, nearby Omdurman, and other Sudanese cities over the past few days after Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, announced a new austerity plan. Police used tear gas and batons against around 200 protesters chanting anti-regime slogans in Omdurman market on 19 June. Earlier the same day, witnesses said police had used force to disperse two university demonstrations. The protests followed Bashir’s announcement of the gradual removal of fuel subsidies and an increase in taxes and customs duty on luxury products, among other measures. The plan aims to help increase revenue and narrow a $2.4 bn budget deficit caused by the loss of oil revenue since the secession of South Sudan in July 2011. The protesters also complained of a 35% hike in public transport tariffs in Khartoum. Inflation rose to 30.4% in May from 28.6% in April, according to Sudan’s statistics agency. Students gathered at the gates of Khartoum’s Sudan University chanting “No to price hikes” and “People want the regime down”, before the police dispersed them using what Ghazy Badridden, an engineering graduate who participated in the demonstrations, called “excessive violence”. Students from Ahlia University in Khartoum were driven out of their classrooms after a large number of security personnel, accompanied by students who belong to the ruling National Congress party, entered the campus in pick-up trucks before attacking students with clubs and batons. Opposition groups have rejected the new austerity package, saying it will hit working people hard and increase inflation and poverty among the already vulnerable population. “These new measures will be the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Ibrahim al-Sanousi, an assistant to the Popular Congress party’s (PCP) leader Hassan al-Turabi. “People are already tired of the regime, which continues to oppress them. They’ll take to the streets until they overthrow the regime.” Al-Sanousi was only released in June after spending five months in detention on suspicion of communicating with armed rebel groups. Sudanese government spokesman Rabie Abdul Ati played down the negative impact of the new measures, and said opposition moves to mobilise the street against the regime would fail. “The Sudanese have been through harsher times during the 90s and they didn’t revolt,” he told IRIN. “People are aware of the crisis we’ve been through after the secession, loss of oil and then the shutdown of oil production, and they know these reforms are the only way to restore the recovery of the national economy.”