A Tribute To Atbara, Craddle Of The Revolution
22 December, 2019
ATBARA (Sudanow) - The citizens of the Northern City of Atbara on December 19 gave a heroes welcome to thousands of revolution supporters from Khartoum who traveled all along a distance of 400KM to share the citizens of that City the celebrations marking the outbreak of the popular uprising that toppled the rule of former dictator Omar Albashir.
In addition to the big crowd of revolution supporters, the Khartoum two trains to Atbara had carried a number of leaders of the Sudanese Professional Association (SPA) that engineered the protests against Bashir’s rule. Dr. Mohammad Naji Alasam, outspoken writer Albarrag Alnathir and Engineer Wala’a Alboushi (now minister of youth and sports) were among the gathering of revolution leaders on the trip to Atbara. Some of those leaders had to top the train to greet the unprecedented throngs of citizens who packed the railway station and its surroundings to see them.
The railway terminal City of Atbara is adored by Sudanese as the place that sparked the uprising against Bashir, with school boys taking to the streets to protest the unaffordable new bread prices. The measure, that actually tripled the price per loaf of bread, was very provocative to the people of Atbara, primarily made of workers and pensioners. Soon after the students protests broke out, many more people from the City and its neighboring areas joined in.
The security heavy-handedly treated the protesters who went on rampage in which the venue of the then ruling party, the National Congress Party, was set ablaze.
The train trip of the Khartoum revolution supporters to Atbara was in reciprocation of a similar train trip by thousands of Atbara citizens who traveled on 23 April to Khartoum to join the sit-in around the Army General Command that eventually forced Army generals to oust Bashir. Once again Atbara revolution supporters took a similar train to Khartoum on 17 August to hail the signing of the power sharing accord between the civilians and the military.
The City of Atbara looms in the political memory of Sudan as a hot bed of revolutions over the years.
Previously, Atbara was always busy receiving passenger and freight trains crossing to and from the different parts of the country. But mismanagement by the operatives of the defunct regime had robbed the railway corporation from much of its train traffic.
Upon disembarking from the train all on board joined the Atbara masses in a march towards the eastern quarter of the City where a sit in yard was prepared in simulation of the famous Khartoum sit in around the Army HQ, begun of the 6th of April 2019 and brutally broken by the security on the 3rd of July.
Before the train would reach Atbara, thousands thronged the space north of the Atbara polytechnic, the place that saw the beginning of the students protests against Bashir’s Government. The citizens had wanted to commemorate that consequential event that developed into a full-blown revolution, spreading like wild fire in the different corners of the country.
On 21 December Atbara saw the fall of its, and the country’s, first martyr Tariq Ahmed, finalist student from the Faculty of Engineering, The Wadi Alneel University.
Tens of thousands of Sudanese have staged political processions around the country the same day, 19 December, to celebrate the revolution anniversary that also coincided with the celebrations marking the elected parliament’s declaration of Sudan’s independence from Britain and Egypt on 19December 1955.
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