Police, students clash in protests over price rises
* Sudan entering economic crisis
* Oil-producing south voting to secede
By Opheera McDoom
KHARTOUM, Jan 13 (Reuters) – Students clashed with police in two cities in north Sudan in a rare public protest against price rises in Africa’s largest country, where the oil-producing south is voting on secession, opposition officials and witnesses said.
Students held protests in the universities of Khartoum and Gezira in the north’s agricultural heartland on Wednesday against proposed cuts in subsidies in petroleum products and sugar, a strategic commodity in Sudan.
The cuts come at a politically sensitive time for the government of President Omar Hassan al Bashir, who stands to lose control over the south in the referendum, agreed as part of a 2005 deal to end a north-south civil war.
Other prices have also risen due to a surge in global food prices and a devaluation in the local currency.
In Khartoum university, police beat dozens of students demonstrating against the price rises, with five slightly injured and an unknown number arrested, one student said.
“The security forces were already there with a very, very heavy presence,” said journalism student al-Fadil Ali.
“They fear this could lead to revolution.”
Sheza Osman Omer from the opposition Democratic Unionist Party in Gezira said several people were injured in clashes between police and students protesting on the streets.
She said police beat them with canes and arrested three female students. The police spokesman was not immediately available to comment on the reports.
PROTESTS, PRICE CONTROLS ACROSS NORTH AFRICA
Algeria and Tunisia have seen serious clashes between police and demonstrators protesting against economic hardship, watched closely by other states in north Africa and across the Arab world with the potential for social unrest.
After several people were killed and hundreds injured in Algeria, the government promised lower prices.
Libya’s government also axed duties on food imports, a newspaper said, and Morocco said it had introduced a compensation system for importers of million soft wheat, which importers said was aimed at keeping prices stable. Jordan has also taken steps to keep food and fuel prices in check.
The government in Khartoum is under extra pressure because of the referendum, viewed by many in the north as a tragedy.
Sudan deployed some 17,500 police to secure voting in the north even though few southerners are voting there.
“It is not about the referendum — there is almost no referendum in the north, it is for their protection against social protests after increasing the prices,” said opposition politician Yasir Arman.
“The north is feeling that the government has betrayed all the dreams of having a new society, of a different route that could have kept the unity of Sudan,” he said.
The police prevented public expressions of sadness after several demonstrations of mourning for the country and have also prevented opposition officials from doing live tv interviews.
In a separate development, a previously unknown group in the central state of Sennar sent a statement to a local newspaper saying it had burned 5,000 feddans (2,100 hectares) of sugar cane in protest at the central government’s “corrupt” policies.
The Revolutionary Front for the People of the Central Provinces, said they represented young farmers in the statement seen by Reuters, but there was no way to confirm their identity.
The state-owned Sudanese Sugar Company said there had been a fire in their fields in Sennar, but said just 200 feddans had been lost and the crop had already been harvested.
“This is highly exaggerated — it is a very small area,” General Manager Bakri Mahjoub told Reuters. “It was done by some people who are now arrested and with the police,” he added.
Khartoum will look to consolidate its power once the south secedes. It has withdrawn from peace talks to resolve the eight-year insurgency in its western Darfur region and fighting has escalated with rebels.
Those clashes have spread to neighbouring Kordofan and Khartoum is anxious to quash any dissent until the sensitive referendum and the complex secession of the south is over.
Rebels from all of Sudan’s regions share similar complaints that successive Khartoum governments, controlled since independence by central Nilotic tribes, have failed to develop the regions and spread education and wealth. (Additional reporting by Khaled Abdelaziz in Khartoum and Christian Lowe in Tunis; editing by Philippa Fletcher)