This morning, July 12, the BBC released a report that it had put together after weeks of detailed research of an attack by military forces in Sudan on student protesters who had been gathering in the streets of its capital, Khartoum, more or less daily since the previous December. The BBC could make the report because many protesters had recorded footage of the attack on their mobile phones, making it one of the first military attacks in world history to be streamed live on the internet. There was next to no ‘official’ footage because news camera crews, paid to do this for a living, could not get near enough to film it themselves. Forget it, said the students, go home and play on your X-box, we’ll do it ourselves.
I watched the report this morning; it makes for some of the most grim news footage I think I have ever seen.
The attack in question took place on June 3, some five or six weeks ago. And I would not wish to have been the news team who sifted through the hours of phone recordings to piece together a report that showed its violent nature but didn’t make little Billy barf into his breakfast bowl. In the end, it was almost impossible not to show a huge amount of violence. It was a violent, bloody massacre over which the people of Sudan had no control. Why should we?
The beginnings of the protests, in December 2018, came about because, suddenly and without warning, the price of bread tripled in the northeastern town of Atbara. The protests, fuelled by social media, spread quickly through other towns, before finally hitting Sudan’s capital, Khartoum.
By February 2019, more than a dozen people had been killed, and more than 800 arrested, in isolated incidents across the country, as the government and military forces – rather than address the causes of the protests – simply squashed the protests as much as they could. On February 22, Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir announced a year-long state of emergency. Protesters were calling for his resignation. Two days later, he was sanctioning raiding the universities, beatings of student protesters and threatening them with 10-year prison sentences if they continued their protests. The students, showing a great deal of resilience and making the government look very bad indeed, did exactly that – continued their protests.
Then, on April 6, the Sudanese Professionals Association called for a march to the headquarters of the armed forces, the call being answered by hundreds and thousands of protesters. This was akin to a general strike. Five days later, on April 11, the protesters got their wish; President al-Bashir was deposed from his job and placed under military house arrest, which you would have thought would have ended the protests, but it didn’t.
Government of the country was taken over by some sort of Transitional Military Council, but that was not what the protesters had fought for. They wanted civilian rule, not to be beaten, tortured, raped and killed by soldiers acting under the rule of law from the government.
Plus, the Sudanese had another big, big problem, and it was called the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF. God knows how or why this organisation was formed, but they came from tribal militia out of the Sudanese desert and known internationally for the part that they played in the conflict in Darfur in 2003, often referred to as one of the worst humanitarian disasters of the world.
Already in conflict with the Sudan Liberation Front and the Justice & Equality Movement, the Janjaweed-powered RSF – armed to the teeth by the Sudanese government and ready for action – began a process of government-sponsored ‘ethnic cleansing,’ because non-Arabs were themselves protesting against unfair treatment. Figures, as always for such tragic events are always difficult to gauge precisely, but the generally accepted figure is that around 480,000 people were killed by the RSF and their pathetic little ‘allies’, while a further three million people were forced into refugee camps housed within the region. The international community, desperately demonstrating that they were doing all they could to help, signed agreements and held top-level meetings, the results of which were all ignored by the RSF. Officially, the conflict still rages on today.
So, the RSF are a bad, bad lot. Although not part of the Sudanese armed forces, they fought on behalf of the government in Darfur, and, on the night of June 2-3 this year, were sent in to Khartoum by the government to end these troublesome protests once and for all.
At around 5 am on June 3, the Sudanese armed forces withdrew, and the RSF took over. Protesters could see it coming – indeed they tweeted what was happening as it happened. This inclusion of social media in the conflict was what set it apart from many student and other population protests in the world and in Africa in particular. Posts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram began to appear from people caught in the headlights, so to speak, of the Rapid Support Forces, who, almost immediately, opened fire.
From then on, as the BBC reported in their piece this morning comprised entirely of mobile phone recordings, official news sources either withdrew or were forced back, and there was precious little, if any, professional-grade footage of the massacre. One particularly shocking sequence involved a student who leaned down to pick up a colleague lying face-down on the ground to move him out of the way. He clearly thought the other man was injured, but in fact the man was stone cold dead. “Oh my God,!” screamed the student, “they’re killing us!”
And indeed they were. By the end of the attack, around 118 people were dead, thousands were injured and around 70 women raped by these disgusting apologies for men. This, the short-sighted, weak-minded military authorities concluded, would see an end to the protests.
But, no. Oppositions groups called for, and got, a three-day general strike a week later, and other non-violent protests and civil disobediences were staged over the coming days. The strike was only ended when the military government agreed to free political prisoners. Victory for the protesters; oh, and the military also agreed to negotiate for a civilian government. That was quite important, too.
On July 5, a deal was reached between the civil protesters and the military government to share power until a full-on civilian government could be arranged. This power share would be in place until democratic, United Nations-supported elections could be held in the country in 2022.
The above is a very broad precis of the events that have taken place in Sudan this year. They show that: governments of all kinds who know they are doing wrong will do anything to hide this from the world, including killing those who are trying to broadcast it on social media. They know that we know what they are up to, and they don’t care.
Most importantly, they show that the students are incredibly admirable and brave in their resilience in calling for democracy in a country ruled by a dictator and then the military. They show that civil protest, peaceful demonstration can achieve such a massive amount, but at a cost. A huge cost. A lot of lives were lost; we in the United Kingdom could learn a great deal from the Sudanese protesters. If such resilience were ever demonstrated in the UK, would our military be ordered to open fire on us? Of course, I would hope not, but there is always that possibility. But, you notice how the greatest protests are always the most successful in countries where the populace are not fattened up on The X Factor or I’m a Celebrity… dulled into submission by reality television and antipathetic to the point of insentience.
I’m a huge admirer of the protesters in Sudan, and I do urge you to watch the video provided by the BBC but with a caveat; they warn you at least twice before the video begins that it is intensely graphic in its depiction of the story of that fateful day on June 3, and so it is, so watch it at your own peril in that context. If you can get past it, then the video – and indeed the coverage on social media that inspired it – is a lesson in bravery from a large group of students who were not going to let this awful violence stop them from letting the world know what two successive regimes were doing to them as human beings. I don’t know if it helps them to know that they have the unending support of many from around the world who watch the videos of this appalling violence not because we like it, but because certainly, I felt that watching it was the next best thing that I could do to being a part of it. They certainly are a steely nation in Sudan, so thank you to them for protesting in a way that shows the world how it’s done, but with additional condolences for the most awful price that they had to pay. x
Stephen Butler - Rant Music 