If every week the Sudanese demonstrate to demand that power be returned to civilians, Thursday is the deadliest day in months and one of the most mobilized.
Nine demonstrators were shot dead by the security forces, at least seven – including a minor – by bullets fired in particular “in the chest” or “the head”, reported doctors, also denouncing the firing of tear gas canisters at the interior of hospitals.
As of Wednesday evening, while small processions called here and there the Sudanese to march, a young demonstrator had been killed by a “bullet in the chest” in Khartoum, according to these doctors.
Since the October 25, 2021 coup, 112 demonstrators have been killed and thousands more injured by security forces who, according to the UN, regularly fire live ammunition into the crowd.
“Even if we must all die, the military will not rule us,” chanted the crowd on Thursday, while the civilian bloc of the Forces for Freedom and Change (FLC) believed that “as expected, the putschists unleashed their violence ” .
Before adding: “Thursday’s parades proved that the revolution is not dead”. Eight months after the coup that plunged one of the world’s poorest countries into the doldrums, protesters continue to demand that the army return power to civilians.
– Internet cut –
June 30 is a symbolic day for this great East African country: it marks the anniversary of the coup that brought dictator Omar al-Bashir to power in 1989.
It was also in June 2019 that monster rallies took place which pushed the generals to integrate civilians into power after having dismissed Bashir.
The demonstrators therefore want to repeat this feat and force the military to hand over the reins of the country to civilians.
As with every call to demonstrate, the internet and the telephone were inaccessible all day before being partly restored again in the evening when certain processions scattered, while the main roads were squared by the security forces, observed by AFP journalists.
In addition to Khartoum and its suburbs, demonstrators also demonstrated in Wad Madani (south), in Darfur (west) and in several towns on the eastern coast, witnesses reported.
Before the demonstrations, the UN envoy Volker Perthes had hammered that “the violence must stop” and several embassies had demanded that “no more lives be lost”.
But foreign capitals are struggling to put pressure on generals who have been in power in Sudan almost continuously since independence in 1956.
On October 25, 2021, when army chief General Burhane abruptly ended the fragile power-sharing by arresting his civilian partners, the international community cut its aid – 40% of Sudan’s budget.
– Ghost of famine –
These financial sanctions did not bend the general but made the economy plunge: the Sudanese pound collapsed and inflation exceeds 200% every month.
Worse still, the specter of famine is looming: a third of the 45 million Sudanese suffer from “acute food insecurity”, potentially fatal, and by September, this figure should reach 50% according to the UN.
Already at the beginning of June, the NGO Save the Children announced the death linked to hunger of two children.
In addition, the spiral of violence in the country at war for decades has resumed its infernal cycle: in Darfur, hundreds of people have died in clashes over land and water and the repression of demonstrations causes deaths every week. or injured.
Despite foreign pressure, the FLC, the backbone of the government sacked during the putsch, refuse to join the “national dialogue” proposed by the army and the UN.
They pose as a precondition to any discussion the return to the sharing of power between civilians and soldiers who, in addition to politics, largely dominate the economy of the country, rich in gold and natural resources.
