Sudan: one year after the massacre on June 3, 2019, justice has not advanced

Text by: Léonard Vincent Follow

On Wednesday, the massacre of revolutionaries installed in front of the army headquarters on June 3, 2019 was commemorated in Sudan. At least 130 people were killed by the Sudanese police and paramilitaries. But a year later, nothing has really advanced for justice to be done.

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This Wednesday in Khartoum, the popular resistance committees, spearheads of the revolution, had organized rallies along the roads, rallies limited because of Covid-19. They all demanded that justice be done for the victims, which is not yet the case. The Sudanese Prime Minister, Abdalla Hamdok, wanted to reassure the revolutionaries, on the occasion of the anniversary of this great rally, which had been decisive in overthrowing the regime of Omar al-Bashir . In a televised speech, he said that justice for the victims of June 3 was "  an inevitable and irreversible step  ". Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, associate researcher at the European Council for Foreign Affairs, says the status quois not inevitable.

RFI: Why have the efforts to bring justice to the affair of the massacre of June 3 failed?

Jean-Baptiste Gallopin : The current political configuration makes transitional justice very delicate, since the power-sharing agreement, obtained last year between the junta which overthrew the regime of Omar el-Bashir and the revolutionary forces, consecrates a role for the military and paramilitaries who ordered this massacre. This means that the Forces for Freedom and Change, the civilian coalition now in power, and Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, have not sought to make transitional justice a workhorse. And this arouses much discontent among the young people who mobilized for the revolution and who today are excluded from this arrangement, from this sharing of power.

Do you share the pessimism of many Sudanese, who believe that justice can never be done for a simple reason of realpolitik ?

I do not think there is an inevitability of the situation, these are political choices. The Freedom and Change Forces and the Prime Minister have chosen not to address this issue for fear of alienating the generals. This is of course reasonable on their part, but they could have adopted a stronger posture, mobilizing the revolutionaries to maintain a balance of power in the face of the generals. What they did not do. This is what is causing discontent among revolutionaries. Last year, when everything was decided, during the negotiations, the mobilization, despite the massacre, did not weaken. A "million walk" in June brought together several hundred thousand people.

Despite this, politicians chose to seek a compromise rather than pushing their advantage. Regarding justice, the investigation committee set up in September 2019 suffers from a lack of political support, notably from the Prime Minister. It does not have sufficient resources and above all, it does not have the means to protect the witnesses, even though General Hemeti's paramilitary militias have launched proceedings against those who criticize them. So today, the investigation committee is very isolated. Its chief believes that he does not have the means to push the question of justice in a daring way.

Are the military and paramilitaries not taking advantage of the transition to play rotting, hoping that the Sudanese, taken by other emergencies, especially economic ones, will ultimately turn away from the demand for justice ?

This is the calculation of all those who are guilty of this kind of abuse: hope that time will have its effect and that the families of the victims will be demobilized. In Sudan, that remains to be seen. We have had a period, for ten months, when the power-sharing agreement pushed the revolutionaries to wait, to see what was going to happen. Today, the observation is clear: on justice, there has been no progress. On the issue of institutional reform, the same: no progress. Today, the generals have regained much of the power and control essentially the internal and foreign policy of Sudan, when in theory, this should be the responsibility of the Prime Minister. It is also clear that the Forces of Freedom and Change, which are supposed to represent the revolutionaries, accept informal decision-making methods, in coordination with the generals and the Prime Minister.

All this shocks many people, especially since the economic and social situation has deteriorated in a catastrophic way, with an inflation which exceeds 100%, queues at the doors of bakeries or petrol stations, to obtain basic goods. Today, anger is mounting. One of the reasons we did not witness a major mobilization was the restrictions associated with Covid-19. The question is how long it can be contained. We can see for example, in the United States, that the protests ignored the health situation.

►Read also: Sudan: the families of the victims of June 3, 2019 demand justice

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• Sudan
• Abdalla Hamdok
• Omar el-Béchir

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