Defiant masses in Sudan hold anti-coup protest ignoring lockdown

Sudanese demonstrators held fresh protests Thursday against the army’s October 25 coup, defying a tight lockdown in the country’s capital Khartoum.
According
to local sources, security forces fired
tear gas at protesters trying to march towards the presidential palace in Khartoum.
Angry
demonstrators reached within a few hundred meters of the palace where military
chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan is based, before troops, police and
paramilitary units dispersed the crowd.
The protests were the
11th day of major demonstrations since the coup, which saw Abdallah Hamdok
removed and then reinstated as prime minister. The demonstrators have demanded
that the military play no role in government during a transition to free
elections.
The activists are
calling for a transition to civilian rule. Witnesses reported similar anti-coup
protests in Madani, south of the capital, and the cities of Kassala and Port
Sudan in the east.
Pro-democracy activists have kept up a campaign of
street demonstrations against the army’s takeover, despite a crackdown that has
seen at least 48 people die in protest-related violence, according to the
independent Doctors’ Committee.
Hamdok had been held under effective house arrest for
weeks before returning to the prime ministerial post under the November deal,
which promised elections for July 2023.
But the agreement was
widely criticized as a gift to the military that gave a cloak of legitimacy to
its coup, with pro-democracy protesters accusing Hamdok of “betrayal”.
Activists, politicians and protesters in Sudan say they are
apathetic towards rumors that Hamdok is preparing to resign only a month
after returning to power in a deal with the military.
Deputy head of the moderate centrist Ummah National Party,
Mohammad Abdullah, simply said: “There is a recognized distinction between who
Hamdok was before and after the deal.”