Sudan cracks down on protests, violence escalates
Sept 6, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Sudanese security forces on Wednesday fired tear gas and beat demonstrators protesting against price increases for basic goods, and a journalist was found beheaded in a further sign of rising political tensions.
Riot police closed ranks in Khartoum’s main streets to block any gatherings of protesters, who vowed they would not stop until their right to protest peacefully was granted.
“Today we intend to deliver our statement to the presidential palace,” said Mariam al-Mahdi, spokeswoman of the Umma Party, one of the largest opposition groups. She was later arrested along with around nine other senior party officials.
Before her own arrest, Mahdi said she saw at least seven man arrested in the center of Khartoum.
In another part of the city the body of a Sudanese newspaper editor was found beheaded, a day after he was reported snatched by unknown armed men from outside his home in the capital.
Mohamed Taha was an ally of the government, which took power in a military coup in 1989.
But protesters who gathered at the morgue where his body was taken accused Khartoum of doing too little to protect a man whose views had been condemned by Sudan’s powerful Islamists after his newspaper, al-Wifaq, published a series of articles questioning the roots of the Prophet Mohammed.
No one has claimed responsibility for the killing.
The government has imposed strict Sharia law in northern Sudan but has been opposed by some Islamist groups.
“Resign, minister, resign minister!” people in a crowd of about 200 shouted after Interior Minister Al-Zubeir Bashir Taha and Defense Minister Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein emerged from viewing the body and visiting Taha’s relatives.
Reporters at the morgue, which was guarded by heavily armed police, said they feared for the future of journalism in Sudan.
Khartoum’s deputy head of police Mohamed Naguib al-Tayyib told the state news agency SUNA that a number of arrests had been made but he later told Reuters that the police still had no idea who had committed the crime.
The killing, similar to recent beheadings in Iraq, raised specters of a violent future for Sudan.
“This is the first time this has happened in Sudan’s history and we fear this will escalate,” said journalist Aziza Abdel Rahman.
EARLIER PROTESTS
Last week, riot police fired teargas at earlier protests against recent increases in the prices of goods like petrol and sugar, imposed to fill a hole in the 2006 budget.
Most of Sudan’s opposition parties support a U.N. mission for Darfur, where a 3 1/2 year conflict has killed tens of thousands of people and forced 2.5 million from their homes.
But the government rejects last week’s Security Council resolution to deploy more than 20,000 U.N. troops and police to Darfur to take over from a cash-strapped African Union mission.
It has roused nationalist sentiment, calling the U.N. transition a Western invasion that would attract Islamist militants and accusing Washington of attempting regime change.
Mahdi said officials accused demonstrators of inciting sedition and supporting an “external plot” against Sudan.
Western diplomats say the government is on the defensive.
“This is not about national sovereignty but about the survival of this government which created the Darfur crisis and cannot find a way out,” said one envoy.
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 SPLM member of parliament.
(Reuters)