By SARAH CHILDRESS
Student protesters in Khartoum clashed with police on Sunday and called for the ouster of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, in a movement organizers said was inspired by the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
Communicating via the social networking site Facebook, organizers called for a street demonstration on Jan. 30 to protest Sudan’s poor economic climate and political oppression. The date was chosen to coincide with the announcement of preliminary results for the south’s referendum on whether to secede from the north. Over 99% of voters chose secession, according to those results, in line with overwhelming support for independence in southern Sudan.
A handful of demonstrations sprang up at various locations in Khartoum, including three of the main universities, and around the country. In Khartoum participants reported via twitter that police had attempted to disperse the crowd with teargas and tasers. Images posted by a Sudanese website showed police clad in riot gear apparently hitting people with long batons.
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Associated Press
Southern Sudanese celebrated the announcement of preliminary referendum results in the city of Juba.
Ahmed Musa, a police officer in Khartoum, said that students started protesting on campuses and attempted to move to the streets, but that police had stopped them. “The stubborn students wanted to start chaos,” Mr. Musa said. “They sung songs praising protests in Tunisia and Egypt… They threw stones at the police, but we controlled them.” Mr. Musa estimated about 120 students were involved in the protest and five had been arrested.
Samira Hassan, a political activist who participated in the protests, said that about 500 people, who included students and other civilians, gathered on a main street in Khartoum. Ms. Hassan said police beat them and arrested about 100 from the crowd.
“The police and security forces hit me and broke my hand, and others were badly beaten–they were beating people viciously,” she said, adding that one hospital that is affiliated with the police had refused to treat her because she had been involved in the protests.
At one of the universities, Omdurman Ahlia University, Ms. Hassan said that students had been beaten for protesting. A professor at the university, who declined to give his name for fear of reprisals said that a group of armed students affiliated with Mr. Bashir’s ruling party roamed the campus to keep students inside the school and away from the protests. “They were chasing other students and carrying knives, iron rods and other weapons of intimidation,” the professor said. “The university security could not stop it … because they know these organizations are backed by the government.”
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The professor said the university would be closed for two weeks.
By Sunday, a Facebook page that called for the demonstrations — and features an image of an angry, hooded protester — had gained more than 16,000 followers.
A translation of the page, which is written in Arabic, said the protesters wanted to oppose “the high cost of living, corruption, nepotism, unemployment and all practices of the ruling power.” It added: “It is about time we show what we’re really made of, it is about time we restore or lost honor, it is about time we fight for our god given rights. Our brothers in Tunisia did it and so did our brothers in Egypt. It is about time for us.”
A military strongman who has ruled Sudan since 1989, Mr. Bashir has shown before he’s not afraid to crush dissent.
Until a peace deal was signed in 2005, Mr. Bashir’s government fought the south in a civil war. In 2003, government-backed militias burned villages, raped and massacred civilians in the western Darfur region after rebels from that area demanded more resources and representation in government.
Mr. Bashir is now wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity for his alleged role in ordering massacres of civilians in Darfur. The U.S. has imposed sanctions on his regime for sponsoring terrorism, although it has agreed to consider removing Sudan from its list of state-sponsors of terrorism now that a peaceful referendum has occurred.
The demonstrations on Sunday followed protests earlier this month elsewhere in northern Sudan after the government slashed subsidies on fuel and curbed imports as it braced for a reduction in its oil revenue after southern Sudan secedes. Police quickly scattered those protesters and arrested a handful of those involved.
Protest organizers for Sunday’s event said in a statement that they weren’t affiliated with opposition parties, whom they said had failed to offer a credible response to Mr. Bashir. “We would like to be clear that this is a call for removal of this government,” it said.