The military regime in Sudan has launched a new wave of arrests and violent intimidation in an effort to undermine opposition plans for a widespread campaign of civil disobedience.
Pro-reform groups have warned of a “frenzied campaign launched by the military junta to arrest political activists and revolutionaries” this weekend ahead of a general strike yesterday.
Professionals, including bankers, doctors, air traffic control staff, pilots, electrical engineers and economists, have been targeted by intelligence services in what the Sudanese Professionals Association, one of the main opposition groups, said was an “obvious attempt” to break the strike.
Photo: AFP
“In the face of these repressive developments, we call upon the workers in the private and public sectors to strictly adhere to the [campaign] of civil disobedience and the general strike. These peaceful means are a way to cherish the blood of the martyrs [and] protect the lives of colleagues,” the group said in a statement.
More than 120 people died and hundreds were injured when paramilitaries attacked a protest camp in the center of the capital, Khartoum, on Monday.
Advocates said that the total number of people detained by security services in the past few days is unclear, but is “probably in the hundreds.”
Two opposition leaders who met Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in Khartoum on Friday have been detained, along with an opposition spokesman.
However, scores more arrests and detentions have gone unreported, opposition groups in Khartoum said.
Abiy was in the Sudanese capital to mediate between the opposition and the ruling Transitional Military Council (TMC), which seized power when former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir was ousted in April after months of mass protests.
Talks between the opposition Declaration of Freedom and Change Forces alliance and the TMC over who would lead a transition period before elections had ground to a halt, then collapsed altogether after the raid on the protest camp.
“The problem is that the figurehead of the regime was removed, but the regime remained in place. There are elements that haven’t understood that; they can’t rule in the same ways as before, given the breadth and depth of the protest movement,” said Murithi Mutiga, an analyst with the International Crisis Group in Nairobi.
The deaths on Monday have been blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is largely made up of militias accused of systematic human rights abuses during the war in Darfur.
The force is led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, who also serves as the deputy head of the TMC.
Witnesses to Monday’s violence told reporters that many protesters drowned after jumping into the Nile when the RSF charged through the camp, shooting and beating unarmed civilians.
An association of medical professionals in Khartoum said that the RSF had retrieved 40 corpses from the river and taken them to be disposed of elsewhere.
Other bodies were later found by residents and advocates. Many had been attached to concrete blocks in an apparent effort to sink them.
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