Sudanese Protest Leaders Threaten Civil Disobedience

Sudan’s Alliance for Freedom and Change has threatened to wage a campaign of civil disobedience if the ruling Transitional Military Council (TMC) refuses to swiftly hand over power to a civilian authority.

“The military council’s response to the proposals of the Alliance for Freedom and Change was disappointing and risked putting the country in jeopardy,” Khalid Omar Yousef, who is a protest leader, told reporters on Wednesday.

“The measures of escalation for us are defined – they are continuing with the sit-in, and we are now preparing for a civil disobedience” campaign across the country, he said.

The TMC handed out a written response to a document presented by the alliance on its proposal for the ruling council. But protest leaders viewed it as an attempt to prolong the period of a power transfer.

Yousef warned the council was fully responsible for the dangerous phase that the country is passing through. “We would rather reach a negotiated settlement with the TMC if it takes the situation seriously.”

The military council’s response is a hint that it is seeking to extend negotiations rather than make a transition of power, he added.

“Issues like sharia and the language of the state, those are ideological weapons the former regime (kept) using to divide the people for the issue of mobilization,” Yousef said.

He reiterated that the demand of the protest is clear: transferring power to civilians.

Yousef criticized the practices of regime forces in the past two days during which they tried to remove barricades and attacked protesters.

Madani Abbas Madani, a protest leader, told reporters that the TMC’s continued rejection of the opposition’s proposals was “complicating the situation”.

Medani accused the TMC of “resorting to the tactics of the former regime”, asserting that Sudan’s sprawling security apparatus was “still running the country”.