Sudan: resistance committees reject junta deal

Submitted by AWL on 23 November, 2021 - 9:45 Author: Sacha Ismail
Young Sudanese protester

The Sudanese military leadership has released political prisoners and reinstated deposed Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok to office.

In a sense the junta is retreating. But in another sense they have simply put some window dressing on their coup.

Hamdok has declared there will be elections by July 2023 — exactly what the coup-leaders was already saying. He has agreed a technocratic cabinet likely to be highly compliant with the military. And the military still has the control of the country’s governing “sovereignty council” it took after the coup.

Moreover Hamdok and his allies have legitimised the coup-makers — after the murder of at least 40 protesters, many of them teenagers (a majority of those in the last week).

The deal was apparently mediated by US and UN officials.

Many foreign powers are pro-coup (Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel). Some, including the US, evidently want to rein in the military — a very different matter from supporting Sudan’s democracy struggle.

Even the mainstream leadership of the bourgeois Forces of Freedom and Change coalition has condemned Hamdok’s deal with the generals. The “resistance committees” leading the struggle in neighbourhoods and on the streets have raised the slogan “No negotiations, no partnership, no compromise”, and called for “open escalation of the struggle” until the coup is crushed.

The committees and Sudan’s militant trade unions will not get solidarity from foreign governments — but they do need solidarity. The international left and labour movement must do our best to give it.

• Take a solidarity picture and tweet with the hashtags #SudanCoup, #SudanRevolution, #AllEyesOnSudan, #KeepEyesOnSudan.
• Sign this solidarity statement.
• There will be more protests in UK cities — look out for them, go along, take your organisation’s banner.

More on Sudan here.

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