Sudan military dictatorship kills pro-democracy protesters

Reuters news agency says about this 3 June 2019 video:

Sudan: at least two protesters killed in military raid on protesters’ camp

UPDATE: at least nine people killed.

Security forces in Sudan have killed at least two protesters in an early morning raid on their camp outside the army headquarters, sparking off yet even more protests in Omdurman, the twin city of Khartoum.

Live footage broadcast by Arab television stations showed chaotic scenes, with protesters running away as black smoke rose from tents apparently torched by the raiding force.

Activists described the raid that killed at least two people and injured dozens, as an attempt to disperse protesters demanding civilian rule.

“The protesters holding a sit-in in front of the army general command are facing a massacre in a treacherous attempt to disperse the protest”, the main protest group said in a statement, urging the Sudanese people to come to their aid.

A Reuters witness saw troops wielding batons deploy in central Khartoum and close roads, apparently to try to block people from reaching the protest site.

Nile bridges that connect various parts of the Sudanese capital have also been blocked.

Protests in Omdurman

In Omdurman, thousands of Sudanese protesters blocked roads with stones and burning tyres.

A witness told Reuters there were no security forces in the area as young men and women blocked main streets and side roads across Omdurman, which sits on the other side of the Nile river from Khartoum.

Stalled negotiations

The violence comes amid a persistent deadlock in talks between protesters and Sudan’s military rulers over demands to hand over power to civilians.

The Transitional Military Council (TMC), which assumed power in April when the military ousted President Omar al-Bashir after three decades in office, has offered to let protesters form a government to run the country but insists on maintaining overall authority during an interim period.

Demonstrators want civilians to run the transitional period and lead the North African country of 40 million to democracy.

Reactions to military violence

The TMC has repeatedly said it would not use force to disperse the protesters, often comprising thousands of young men and women who take turns camping outside the Defence Ministry.

No statement about the violence has yet been issued by the TMC.

Stability in Sudan is crucial for a region grappling with violence that stretches from the Horn of Africa to Libya. …

The royal dictatorship of Saudi Arabia, the main allies of the self-styled ‘free world’ in the Middle East, is propping up the military dictators in Sudan. As they want to continue to use Sudanese child soldiers as cannon fodder in their bloody war on the people of Yemen.

Years ago, many years ago, quite some people in the political establishment and the ‘celebrities’ establishment in NATO countries used to point out the bloody violence by the Sudanese regime, then led by Bashir, especially in Darfur province. Correctly so. Incorrectly, they used the crimes of the dictatorship as pretext for trying to start yet another humanitarian oil war, this time by invading Sudan.

However, these establishment voices fell silent when dictator Bashir of Sudan helped NATO in another pseudo-humanitarian war, the 2011 war on Libya.

The silence became even louder after Bashir helped the European Union to stop refugees. And after Bashir sent soldiers, many of them child soldiers, to help in the Saudi Arabian regime-Pentagon war on the people of Yemen.

"Saudi commanders were too afraid to go anywhere near the front in Yemen & just gave cell phones to Yemeni commanders … there are very few Saudi or UAE ground troops in Yemen, since the strategy is to bombard without regard for human welfare." @jricole https://t.co/c40vRXqByu

— Keith Brumley🌻☮️ (@bkeithb) December 30, 2018

In the USA, a tortured Sudanese refugee was arrested by Donald Trump’s ICE.

NATO countries’ governments forcibly deport refugees to Sudan, where they are tortured. Eg, the Belgian government does so.

And so does the government of the Netherlands.

These governments want the ‘stability’ of the grave and the torture chamber for Sudan.

The sit-in had become the focal point of protests that started in December, sparked by a severe financial crisis that caused cash shortages and bread price hikes.