Sudanese opposition defy threats, plan second protest
Sept 6, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudanese opposition groups were set to challenge Khartoum on Wednesday with a second protest against price increases for basic goods after security forces violently dispersed similar demonstrations a week ago.
The organisers, dozens of whom have been arrested in the past week, vowed they would not stop until their democratic right to protest peacefully was granted to them.
“Today we intend to deliver our statement to the presidential palace,” said Mariam al-Mahdi, spokesperson of one of the largest opposition parties, the Umma Party.
Mahdi said senior police and state security officials had called opposition leadership to their headquarters on Tuesday on the pretext of planning the route of the protest, which has been denied permission to go ahead.
“But it was a trick. Instead they threatened us that they would hit us and kill us and the blood would run in the streets if we went ahead,” she added.
State security officials were not immediately available to comment.
Khartoum recently raised prices of goods like petrol and sugar to fill a hole in the 2006 budget.
Last Wednesday, riot police fired teargas at banner-waving demonstrators who took to the streets of central Khartoum against the increases. Lorries filled with heavily armed soldiers drove around the capital in a show of force.
The protests come amid calls for national unity from President Omar Hassan al-Bashir as Khartoum faces off with the international community over a U.N. force in Darfur.
Khartoum’s National Congress Party, which dominates government, parliament and the powerful state security apparatus, is on a collision course with the international community over sending U.N. troops to Darfur.
They reject a Security Council resolution passed last Thursday to deploy more than 20,000 U.N. troops and police to Darfur to take over from a cash-strapped African Union mission.
NATIONALIST SENTIMENT
And they have roused nationalist sentiment in Sudan, calling the U.N. transition a Western invasion that would attract jihadi militants and accusing Washington of attempting regime change.
The state-owned Sudan Vision daily on Wednesday led with a story of a secret high-level Jewish-American plot to place AU soldiers in Darfur under U.N. command by Sept. 17.
These media tools are effective in convincing many of Sudan’s population they are under threat by the U.N. deployment.
But analysts say the government is using the threat to deflect attention from the standoff over Darfur which is eroding international goodwill arising from Khartoum’s January 2005 peace deal that ended a 20-year civil war with southern rebels.
“This is not about national sovereignty but about the survival of this government who created the Darfur crisis and cannot find a way out,” said one Western diplomat.
Most of Sudan’s opposition parties support a U.N. Darfur mission. Mahdi said officials accused demonstrators of inciting secession and supporting the “external plot” against Sudan.
Others point to the fact that AU forces currently in Darfur are also foreign troops invited by Khartoum and that there are more than 10,000 U.N. troops already in Sudan’s south and even in the capital under the separate north-south peace deal.
“Has Darfur become the only holy place in the whole of Sudan because they won’t let (international forces) in there?” said Pagan Amum, secretary-general of the former southern rebel party which joined government after the 2005 accord.
Critics say the government fears U.N. troops would be used to arrest any officials or militia likely to be indicted by the International Criminal Court investigating alleged war crimes.
“Would you sign your own death warrant?” asked Ghazi Suleiman, a human rights lawyer and member of parliament.
(Reuters)