Demonstration under the cover of darkness .. A new tactic for the protesters of Sudan

Ahmed Fadl-Khartoum

The security services in Sudan have tested demonstrations of time and space for 26 days, but it seems they will have to deal with ghosts after the gathering of professionals and opposition forces has organized protests under the cover of the night.

Since the first demonstration demanding the departure of President Omar al-Bashir on December 25, joint police, security and other security groups have been receiving information on the launch of the Sudan Professionals Gathering, making it easier to concentrate in the region and at the right time.

But they will have a harder task trying to suppress small protests in neighborhoods and alleys, at least in Khartoum state with an area of ​​more than 22,000 square kilometers and a population of eight million.

According to a statement issued on Sunday evening by the organizing forces of the protests, the gathering of professionals, the call of Sudan, the national consensus forces and the opposition federal assembly, evening demonstrations will begin on Tuesday at 5 pm in the suburbs of Al-Kalakla south of Khartoum and the revolution to its northwest, and to announce more evening demonstrations later.

The demonstrations appeared to be a "warm-up exercise" for a new demonstration that the statement said would be launched in Khartoum next Thursday from Al-Qasr Street towards the presidential palace to demand again the overthrow of Bashir and his government.

The so-called "demonstrations of withdrawal" have always been followed by day-to-day operations in which security forces have been forced into incursions into neighborhoods to hunt down protesters, where homes are a haven for stalkers.

Night clothes
The violence against the demonstrations announced by the security authorities has led the head of the National Union of Forces of Consensus, Farouk Abu Issa, to say that evening protests in neighborhoods will be more protected than daytime on the main streets.

"The evening demonstrations are easier and safer than the infiltration of the regime's agents, because the young people of the neighborhoods know each other and thus are safe from being beaten and prosecuted," he said. .

It is believed that the protests in the evening will exhaust the security forces to the extent of their size and ignorance of the starting point, as well as the impact will be large if it widened, and the voice will be high.

Since December 19, Sudan has been witnessing ongoing protests that began to protest the deteriorating economic situation, but quickly turned into demands for the overthrow of the regime.

New Forces
Mohamed Dadaa, a leader of the Ba'ath Party, a member of the Sudan Appeal Coalition, said that the evening protests are beyond the exhaustion of the authorities and that they are now forming a balance of new forces in the Sudanese political arena.

Young people of both sexes are protesting against the fiercest and broader protests being tested by President Bashir, who has been in power for nearly three decades when he led a military coup on June 30, 1989.

"It is true that the government has everything in exchange for isolated protesters, but their silence underscored the vitality of the Sudanese people and their ability to face verbal and physical violence," he said.

"Their threat to the shadow brigades and the beheadings only added more anger and defiance among the people," he said, referring to the leaders of the ruling majority party, Ali Osman Mohamed Taha and al-Fathah Izz al-Din.

The strike weapon
And betting on the forces of the protests on the comprehensive strike, and points out in its statement that the road to him became a temple, and that the line in the coming days will paralyze the movement of the regime.

The Sudanese have previous experiences in using the general strike weapon and civil disobedience to overthrow military regimes, but the nature and form of the current regime seems different from previous regimes.

Farouk Abu Eissa, however, seems optimistic. He says the general strike has tried twice and succeeded in preparing less in the April 1985 uprising and the October 1964 revolution. "Because the protests are bigger and wider, in the past there were demonstrations in Khartoum, but now all the cities of the country."

"The man needs the success of the strike to choose the right time for his publicity and good preparation by completing the sectors of professionals and other entities and their unions and committees, then the system will be blessed."

Mohammed and Da'a also bet that the strike plans can be verified by the fact that there is already a strike by doctors in most public hospitals. Universities are closed, schools have also been closed and many families have not responded to send their children since Sunday.

The nerve of the protests
Doctors are the backbone of the gathering of Sudanese professionals, who have become the main facade of the processions demanding Bashir's departure. Despite the arrest of his leaders, cadres in the shadow run the protests through two Facebook and Twitter accounts.

The hospitals were a signpost from which the peaceful processions of the gathering took place in Khartoum, Omdurman, Wadi Madani and Port Sudan.

A member of the Secretariat of the Association of Professionals, who maintains his name, said that the control of the government and the NCP on trade unions since 1989 has motivated professional groups to search for entities that represent their interests rather than those of the Authority.

The doctors, along with fellow university professors, engineers, lawyers and journalists, now represent the spearhead in the processions, which embarrassed the government for its peace in exchange for the violence it waged against the demonstrators.

The group of professionals benefited from the experience of a strike by the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors in 2016 and succeeded in paralyzing the hospitals. The government then had to sit down and negotiate with the doctors' committee, although it was a parallel body of the Union of Doctors and Medical Professions.