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There is an air of déjà vu in Sudan since the October 25 coup. The junta led by General Abdel-Fattah Al-Bourhane not only overthrew the authorities of the transition which was to lead, in 2023, to democratic elections. It is also working to bring the country back almost two years, to the time of the “Kezan” regime, that of the ex-dictator, Omar Al-Bachir, overthrown in April 2019, at the end of four months of popular revolution. .
We can already see it in the methods used to try to crush the popular uprising triggered by the coup. Once again fleets of pick-ups are released into the streets with armed elements on board, some in civilian clothes, who disperse the demonstrators by violence, including with live ammunition, or tear gas in the streets. houses. Beatings are on the increase, even affecting the families of people suspected of being part of the clandestine structures of the protest. The resistance committees have regained their 2019 organization. But the repression is in full swing. About a hundred arrests have already taken place, affecting those responsible for the protest and figures in the political sphere, such as Yassir Arman, number two of a former rebel armed group, the SPLM-North (Sudan People’s Liberation Movement) , who had become the adviser to the Prime Minister of the transition, Abdallah Hamdok, and had refused to flee Sudan during the putsch. A representative of the Sudanese Professionals Association estimates the number of arrests nationwide at 270.
Abdallah Hamdok, the “technocrat” who has spent his entire career in international institutions, before returning to Sudan in 2019 to head the transitional government, is now under house arrest at his own home. His guard has just been reinforced. The ousted Prime Minister has health problems, including diabetes for which he has asked to be able to perform his usual tests with his doctor. But it was that of General Al-Bourhane who introduced himself to him. The junta soldiers hope that by means of pressure Mr. Hamdok will end up bending and taking the head of a puppet government, likely to convince the international financial institutions to continue the normalization of Sudan and allow the country to access borrowing facilities without which no improvement in the economy is possible.
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