Police crackdown Khartoum peaceful demonstration

By Namaa Al Mahdi

Sept 6, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Four thousand riot police officers in pick up trucks with Kalashnikov guns, electric sticks and leather whips broke this afternoon’s peaceful demonstrations in the Sudan’s capital city Khartoum. Hundreds of people were beaten and then arrested by the Sudanese police forces. All detainees were released except the prominent Sudanese politicians Siddig Al Sadig Al Mahdi, Mariam Al Sadig Al Mahdi and Mrs. Sara Nougdallah.

The call for the peaceful demonstrations was made by the Sudanese Umma party leader and Imam of the Ansar Movement Sadig Al Mahdi. In a supercharged address to the nation on Tuesday night 5 September 2005, he condemned the unjustified increase in basic commodities prices implemented by the Government of National Unity and called for the people to protest peacefully in a demonstration held in the capital city of the Sudan Khartoum.

The unfounded increase of basic commodity prices which occasioned this protest is a 30% increase in fuel, sugar and wheat prices, which was implemented by the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) in spite of the protest of the Sudanese opposition parties: the Umma Party, the Popular Congress Party, and the Sudanese Communist Party.

It was also implemented against the will of the Sudanese parties currently in the Government of National Unity: the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and the Democratic Unionist Party and the Sudan Liberation Movement led by Minni Minawi. The NCP offered no reasonable explanation to the price increases for basic goods, and the sudden increase of the burden of everyday living to the many Sudanese who are currently under the poverty line, earning less than $1 USD a day. This increase in the basic commodities cause a similar 30% increase in the prices of perishable and non-perishable goods, and adding to the plight of the people who can barely afford to feed themselves and their families in the Sudan.

The Umma Party leader’s address to a meeting at the Umma party headquarters in Omdurman, Khartoum State, was aimed to urge the people to protest peacefully against the sudden price increases for basic goods, to urge the Government of National Unity to respect the Constitution of the Sudan which does not oppose peaceful demonstrations and to discourage the security forces and the police forces to inflict harm on the unarmed civilians who will make up the demonstration.

The Umma party had been granted a permit for the demonstrations by the Sudanese security forces, but a similar permit was refused by the police forces with the excuse that the current state of the country does not allow for such actions by a group of Sudanese people. The demonstration plans went ahead regardless and it was planned that the people meet in Khartoum and to march to the Ministry of Finance which was implementing the price increases.

4000 riot police were deployed to diffuse a demonstration of less than a thousand people, most of the demonstrators were beaten by the riot police sticks, diffused by heavy tear gas and then most of them were arrested.

A prominent Sudanese journalist Mrs Amal Abbas, along with Mariam Al Saddig Al Mahdi, Siddig Al Sadig Al Mahdi, Abdulrahman Al Ghali Al Jali, Al Wathig Mohamed Ahmed Al Berier, Mrs. Sara Noukdallah, Esam Faisal Al Mahdi, Adul Salam Salih Abdul Salam Al Kalifa, Adbullahi Ismail Al Mahdi, Mourtada Al Ghali Al Jali were arrested along with truck loads of prominent Sudanese Umma party members, Communist party members and Popular Congress party members and other Sudanese citizens. All were later released following the signing of a declaration not to be involved in such actions again. However, the police charged Siddig Al Sadig Al Mahdi, Miriam Al Sadig Al Mahdi and Mrs. Sarra Noukdallah and will be facing the courts tomorrow at an unspecified time.

Later on in the afternoon riots broke again in Al Souk Al Arabi in Khartoum and the heavy-handed riots police was seen rushing to crush the riots which seem to have emerged from the morgue following the mysterious abduction and decapitation of a prominent Sudanese journalist Mohamed Taha Ahmed Mohamed. The riots were diffused by the police use of tear gas which has leaked into the homes of the residents of Khartoum and stung their eyes, heavy whips were seen lashing onto the vulnerable Sudanese citizens whether involved in the riots or not. The riot police using heavy sticks, electric sticks and tear gas dispersed all public grouping and meeting.

In the night, further riots erupted in Souk Omdurman, Khartoum and the heavy-handed riot police are practicing their inhuman crowd diffusion methods on the innocent Sudanese citizens.

(ST)