Sudanese police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of peaceful protesters outside an opposition party mosque on Friday, the 14th day of anti-regime demonstrations sparked by inflation, a witness said. Protesters had gathered in the capital's Hijra Square beside the mosque of the opposition Umma party.The witness said demonstrators carried Sudanese flags and banners reading "The people want the regime to fall," a slogan used by protesters during the Arab Spring uprisings against regional strongmen over the past year.
After the tear gas and an unknown number of arrests, demonstrators burned tyres and threw stones at police before running for cover, the witness said. Demonstrators planned major protests for Friday and Saturday, the 23rd anniversary of a coup by President Omar al-Bashir
Head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself president-for-life. He has fallen out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to
ArabizeDarfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it.
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Human rights groups say scores of people have been placed in durance vile
... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not...
since the protests against high food prices began on June 16 at the University of Khartoum.
After Bashir announced austerity measures, including tax hikes and an end to cheap fuel, the protests spread to include a cross-section of people in numerous locations throughout the capital and other parts of Sudan.
Demonstrators, typically in groups of 100 or 200, have burned tyres, thrown stones and blocked roads in a call for regime change which has almost universally been met by police tear gas.
Bashir, suggesting that someone was behind the disturbances, has called them small-scale and not comparable to the Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and elsewhere. He maintains that he himself is popular.