12-November-2024

Weekly Press Columns Digest

Weekly Press Columns Digest


KHARTOUM (Sudanow)
The editor has picked these three commentaries from the local press that cover the most outstanding issues of the week

The three articles have tackled: (1) the brutal and malicious methods adopted by the security in dealing with the massive opposition protests being staged to condemn General Burhan’s military coup (2) the closure of the Khartoum main bridges by bulk shipping containers to prevent the protesters from  joining their fellows in Khartoum proper in the demonstrations (3) the recent announcement by General Burhan about the holding of early elections.

On the wicked methods followed by the security in dealing with the protesters in the streets of Khartoum, wrote Mr. Hayhtam Alfadl in the daily newspaper Aldemograti (The Democrat):

The committee of ‘lawyers in emergency’ (Lawyers for the Revolution) has announced that the security have detained crowds of young men and women taking part in the 25 December mass demonstrations. The security has this time devised a new law of their own: They forcefully took samples of the detainees urine and blood. The measure is understood to be in a bid to incriminate the detainees for taking narcotic drugs, or even trading them. The security know that political protests are protected by the laws, both local and international. So, in order to do more harm to the protesters, the security plays this tactic of accusing them of taking drugs to put them under harsher articles of the country’s penal code.. 

This malicious exercise on the part of the security could be meant to condemn these youths for taking or trafficking in drugs, crimes they are innocent from. And also, in the process, the security may forge medical reports to condemn these accused.

After the varied and unimaginable ways of repression leveled against the protesters, now the security may want to put the protesters behind the bars for long years on fake drug accusations.

The authorities, having failed to contain the protesters courage, even by trying weapons of rape and sexual harassment on females, have now devised this new drug weapon to silence the youths by taking them to fake courts that put them in jail.

The security are already detaining several protesters, some of them children on the charge of attacking a police station in Khartoum North. These young men are now languishing in jail for failure to pay huge bails that amount to millions of pounds  which neither them nor their poor families can afford to pay.

This is what we say to the security: These designs do not conform with the Sudanese morality and its inherited values.

We also tell the security: All attempts to stop this revolution are doomed to fail whatever you may do. The protesters who fill the streets now will never be deterred.

You should also know that it is the operatives of the defunct regime who should be held responsible and condemned by courts of law for any form of lawlessness that has appeared in our society. Accusing fingers have often been raised against influential figures in the security of the defunct regime of allowing shipments of drugs to be imported or exported via the country’s sea harbors and airports.
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On the security’s closure of the Khartoum major bridges by bulk shipping containers to prevent protesters from pouring into Central Khartoum to march towards the State House (The Republican Palace), wrote Mohammad Abdelmajid in the daily newspaper Alentibaha ( vigilance):

This deed on the part of the security well demonstrates the weakness of the government and reaffirms the strength of the people of Sudan.

It is a certification of the power of the mass processions and the uprising.

The security is talking about the weakness of the protests and that they were receding, and at the same time they (the security) hide behind containers, gunfire and tear gas.

A government that hides itself from its people behind containers is disqualified to stay in power.

Further and above, this is also an indication of the absence of trust between the government and the people. At the same time the government is writing a certificate of its own weakness and lowness.
By placing these containers where they are, the government has also given a moral and positive boost  to the uprising,
They are placing these containers at a distance of meters from the Republican Palace to protect their throne.

Here we have a government that owns five armies and that protects itself by containers. This is a proof that weapons cannot protect governments.
In a related move, General Burhan has decreed availing the General Intelligence Service the right to arrest.

Burhan’s decree to this effect,  according to the state of emergency, has given the security immunity to arrest. It said the security are authorized to enter buildings and homes to search and arrest.

in accordance with these measures, press censorship and the arrest of journalists may be back. This happens after a revolution that brought Burhan, Hemaidti and Hamdok to office and that raised the slogan of: freedom, peace and justice.

The differences between this regime and the deposed one have become so narrow. This regime may develop into something worse than that one, taking into regard that some of the practices of this regime did not occur even during that ousted regime.

As examples of this, the internet was never put offline during the ousted regime, whereas it was cut off for about a month following this military coup. The Internet and the telephone service are now cut off whenever there are scheduled demonstrations.
The ruling authority of today has gone beyond reason and closed the Mek Nimir Bridge with huge bulk containers.

Those persons who used to criticize the small stone barricades built to protect the peaceful protesters from the security are now barricading the bridges with bulk shipping containers and cutting off the internet and telephone services.        
What they are doing now is a result of the 25 October military coup, what they call a corrective move: Correction with containers and tear gas and the return of the security and intelligence with harsher powers and jurisdictions.
Occupants of the sovereign government offices do not know that their chances to remain in office become less the more they tighten their security grip and increase their means of repression and oppression.
History tells us that all government fail when they resort to the use of heavy repressive and illegal measures.

Bullets, tear gas and arrests actually add to the enthusiasm of the revolution and invigorate the cells of uprisings.
The entire state budget is spent on tear gas, bananas, containers and on heightening the Army General Command’s fence.

(From the editor: The word bananas used by the writer here refers to the incident when the military organized a hoax- sit in near the State House in which it inspired some elements to call for a military coup. The ”guests” at the sit- in were supplied with much food and bananas. That is why the sit-in was dubbed “The banana sit-in:, or else , “the five star sit-in.” 
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On General Burhan’s recent call for early elections, wrote Osman Mohammad Hassan in the electronic publication Sudanile:

General Burhan has hastened to assemble together a miserable lot of demagogues and push them to defy the protesters in an early election as a necessary solution to the government crisis in Sudan. Behind this lot, an orchestra of mobs has repeated the call for early elections.

They are dreaming of a new legitimacy to the false rule of the Salvation Government of Omar Albashir, which was condemned to death by the December 2018 Revolution. This miserable lot coordinates to hold early elections, setting the scene for a fake poll as they used to do during their despotic regime.

The lasting horror that obsesses Burhan and Hemaidti and those who rotate around the dying sun of the Salvation Government is behind this feverish talk about early elections.

The official spokeswoman of the Sovereignty Council has announced that the national elections commission will begin in early January the preparations for the elections which will be held in July 2023. Simply like that! Just like the simple way in which Burhan has staged his military coup, they will hold an election in which they will declare themselves the winners.

They are playing with the concept of the elections and the concept of democracy. As usual and as they have done throughout their dissolved rule, they close their eyes to the insecurity in a number of the country’s states.

They shut their ears not to hear the cries of the bereaved in all the Sudanese territories.

There is no security nor peace for holding a free, fair and transparent elections. How can such an election be held while the guns are pointed towards every voter and the waywardness of the janjaweed and armed robbers still not under control, quite deliberately?!

The declared state of emergency is dangling over the heads of the voters with the jurisdictions recently given to the Intelligence Service.

The basic necessities of a general vote such as the election commission, the election law, the population census and the distribution of the constituencies are not in place.

Whenever Burhan wants to consolidate his rule, he takes a measure that destabilizes that rule. He continues to fall into a bottomless hole.

What we see today on the theatre of Sudanese political absurd is the last episode of the worst end for General Burhan himself, the end of his rule of Sudan. May be his end would come on the gallows or in the prison cell or may be at the hands of Emperor Hemaidti.

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YH/AS 

 

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