These protests come in light of great security tension, after the killing of the commander of the Khartoum sector in the Central Reserve Forces, Brigadier General Ali Berima.
During the past hours, the security authorities carried out a wide campaign of arrests that included a number of revivalists in Khartoum, Omdurman and Khartoum North, and targeted dozens of young people and activists in the resistance committees that lead the current movement in the Sudanese street.
And media reports spoke of storming a number of hospitals and arresting a number of injured people who were receiving treatment inside them.
Doctors and health sector workers organized a number of vigils during the past two days, calling for an end to the repeated violations against hospitals and attacks against medical personnel.
The resistance committees and political forces had called for new protests called “January 17 Millions” in Khartoum and other cities, to demand a “pure civil state”.
These demonstrations come after the UN mission in Sudan revealed the continuation of its consultations with various parties, as its President Volker Peretz met during the past days with representatives of the Communist Party and the Sudanese Congress, in addition to the Forces for Freedom and Change, resistance committees, civil society organizations and women’s groups.
The Forces for Freedom and Change asked Peretz to “expand the base of the dialogue initiative” that he recently launched, by establishing a mechanism that includes international actors from the Troika countries, the European Union and the African Union.
A member of the Central Council of the Forces of Freedom and Change, Wajdi Saleh, said that council members “will not negotiate with the current military council, but they will be open to dialogue with other political forces, provided that the dialogue leads to a comprehensive transitional process that ultimately leads to free and fair elections.”
In the same context, Salma Nour, a member of the Central Council of the Forces of Freedom and Change, told Sky News Arabia that “there will be no value for the initiative without creating the appropriate atmosphere for dialogue, ending the state of emergency and all measures taken by the army on October 25, and stopping violations against protesters and politicians.
While Peretz stressed that the mission of the UN initiative is only to facilitate the meeting of the Sudanese parties and to sit around one negotiating table, as there are no points to raise or impose on the parties, the Forces of Freedom and Change emphasized the need to “set a clear practical and time frame.”
So far, attitudes towards the initiative have varied greatly. While some political forces welcomed it, other forces, including the Professionals Association and effective parties and entities leading the current protests, announced their initial rejection of it.
For more than two months, Sudan has been experiencing a stifling political and security crisis, and a state of economic and service paralysis, due to the continuous wave of protests fueled by the October 25 measures, which were also met with widespread international condemnation and prompted the United States, European Union countries and international financial institutions to freeze their aid to the country.
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