A year after the coup d’etat of General Abdel Fattah al-Bourhane, thousands of people went down to the street to claim a civil government.
Le Monde with AFP
The police pulled tear gas over thousands of Sudanese who came to the streets, Tuesday, October 25, to mark the first anniversary of the putsch and claim a civil government, braving the internet cut and a massive military deployment. “The military in the barracks!” Chanted demonstrators in the capital, Khartoum, and its suburbs, where all the roads were blocked.
Because from dawn, the two camps have activated: the demonstrators have erected barricades to slow down the progress of the security forces and these blocked bridges and avenues to prevent a surge of protesters to the presidential palace , where General Abdel Fattah Al-Bourhane, author of the coup d’etat of October 25, 2021. Headquarted, it was near this building that the police pulled tear gas grenades to try to disperse the crowd, witnesses reported.
Since the putsch, demonstrators and activists repeat the same watchword: “No negotiation or partnership with the putschists” and return to power of civilians, sine qua non for the resumption of international aid, interrupted Following the coup.
internet coupé
A year ago, General Bourhane, head of the army, broke all the commitments made two years earlier in Sudan, a country plunged into a serious economic crisis. At dawn, he had the civil leaders arrested with whom he had agreed to share power when, in 2019, the army was forced by the street to deposit one of his own, the dictator Omar al-Bachir, after Three decades in power.
Each mobilization against the coup, the Internet connection is interrupted in the country, as is the case this Tuesday. Despite everything, “hundreds of students and students went out in Atbara,” ADEL Mohammed, a resident of this city 350 km north of Khartoum, told AFP. The protests continued in the afternoon, despite the repression which killed 118 demonstrators in one year, according to pro-democracy doctors.
Sudan is swimming in uncertainty. No observer can imagine the holding of the elections promised in the summer of 2023, no political figure seemed so far to join the civil government regularly promised by General Bourhane, while international mediations have not succeeded. And international aid is sorely necessary in this country, one of the poorest in the world, where the economic situation is catastrophic.
Between three -digit inflation and food shortages, a third of the 45 million inhabitants suffer from hunger. It is 50 % more than a year ago, underlines the World Food Program (PAM). The price of the minimum food basket increased by 137 % in one year, forcing almost all households to “devote more than two thirds of their income to food”, adds the WCM. H2>
In addition to difficult living conditions, many Sudanese are worried, three years after the 2019 “Revolution”, the return of the Islamo-military dictatorship. Because since the putsch, several faithful of Mr. Bachir, today in prison, have found their posts, notably to justice, which currently conducts the trial of the ex-president.
In their calls to demonstrate, activists have promised that “the parades of October 25 will be the announcement of the end of the era of putschists and the constitution of a civil and democratic Sudan”. On Monday, Western embassies called “the authorities to respect the right of peaceful gathering” and to “do not use force”.
After the putsch, the security vacuum in certain places has left tribal conflicts prosper, fall under experts. These battles with automatic weapons, generally for access to land and water, have left nearly 600 dead and more than 210,000 displaced since the start of the year, according to the UN. Monday, thousands of Sudanese demonstrated in the province of Nile Bleu (South), where 250 people were killed last week in tribal fights.