No need to take up arms if Bashir regime collapses : Minnawi
December 21, 2016 (KHARTOUM) – Minni Minnawi, a leader of a Sudan Liberation Movement faction (SLM-MM) welcomed calls to topple the regime of President Omer al-Bashir through the civil disobedience and announced the fall of the regime means the end of armed struggle.
Speaking in a public meeting in Hanover, Germany on Sunday 18 December, the day before the general strike, Minnawi said his movement backs all the efforts by activists aimed to overthrow the Sudanese regime.
“We assure you that the fall of the regime means the end of the reasons for the armed struggle and will we will participate in the peace building process,” Minnawi said according to a statement extended by his movement to Sudan Tribune on Wednesday.
Minnawi who was addressing Sudanese Diaspora in a meeting organized by the SLM-MM representatives in Germany hailed the struggle of the Sudanese people against military regimes in 1964 and 1984.
He further urged all the civil society groups to stand by the activists who used through the social media to mobilize the street.
Sudanese activists have been campaigning for a successful civil disobedience to overthrow the government of President Omer al-Bashir since last November following the increase of fuel and electricity prices. They called for a three-day general strike on 27 November and this month they called for a one-day protest on 19 December.
The rebel leader said there is a need to continue calls for civil disobedience to bring down the regime pointing that “There is a clear flaw in the sovereignty of the state, which has been turned into a state of militia,” he emphasized.
He also underscored the absence of a national project during the successive regimes that ruled Sudan in the past and spoke about the project of new Sudan saying “it is vital to get the country out of the endemic crisis”.
Sudanese opposition political and armed groups called on their supporters to rally behind calls by activists groups to stay at home to protest against the austerity measures announced by the Sudanese government.
Government and National Congress Party officials used in the past to use the rebel groups as scarecrow to dissuade the people take to the street to protest against the government policies.
(ST)