Workers still battling in Sudan

Submitted by AWL on 11 January, 2022 - 2:27 Author: Mohan Sen
Sudanese court workers on strike

Court workers on strike


The contrast between the respectable “friends” of democracy in Sudan and the grassroots mass movement actually fighting for democracy is striking.

In November Abdalla Hamdok, the prime minister overthrown by the 25 October military coup, did a deal with the military to be reinstated as decoration for their regime. The Biden government rushed to endorse this charade as a path to democracy.

The US and UK signed a joint statement welcoming the deal with the autocracies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia — both highly supportive of the Sudanese military.

The EU took a similar position, as did the UN’s top officials. Many countries — notably Russia — have simply backed the military.

Meanwhile the repression and bloodshed in Sudan continued, a wave of beatings, rapes, tear-gassings, mass arrests and killings. At least 60 have been killed, according to the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors.

Democracy activists in Sudan — local “resistance committees”, trade unions and even the mainly-bourgeois Forces of Freedom and Change coalition — condemned Hamdok’s actions. Hamdok felt compelled to resign (2 January).

Very large numbers have continued to take to the streets, every few days. They reject even an improved version of the pre-coup military-civilian power-sharing arrangement and demand a fully civilian government. “No negotiation, no partnership, no legitimacy!”

Since the uprising which overthrew military-Islamist dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019, trade unions have been central to Sudan’s fight for democracy. Many groups of workers are battling against the coup but also for their rights as workers.

On 2-6 January thousands of court workers across Sudan struck to demand increased bonuses to meet the soaring cost of living. In many parts of the country, the strike was 100% solid.

Thousands of bank workers have been on strike against the coup. Now 200 workers at the Bank of Khartoum — Sudan’s largest bank, privatised in 2010, transferring mainly to UAE ownership — have been sacked and hundreds more face the sack for organising against the coup and for improved conditions.

Links are developing between striking workers and resistance committees. The “December Revolution Coordination” in the suburbs of Omdurman (the country’s biggest city) said the following on 5 January:

“Let us stand in solidarity with the workers at the Bank of Khartoum, the judicial institution, and Centroid Company in order to restore their rights. We must root the principle of mutual solidarity among all the forces of resistance in order to bring about a revolution in the institutions and housing. This will lead to the overthrow of a regime which established economic policies based on sacking workers and denying them their rights. We need to build a national economic system based on nationalising all the public properties and institutions which have been privatised through the same reactionary policies.”

• Updates about workers’ struggles on the Sudanese Workers Alliance for the Restoration of Trade Unions Facebook page and the MENA Solidarity campaign website
• Sign a statement of solidarity here

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