Thousands of protesters in Sudan, under tear gas

The coup led on October 25, 2021 by the army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, brutally halted the democratic transition launched in 2019 after the fall of the Islamic-military dictatorship of Omar el-Bashir .

Since then, every week, pro-democracy demonstrators have taken to the streets. On Sunday, they were mobilized by the thousands in Khartoum and in several cities despite a crackdown that has already left 119 dead and thousands injured, according to doctors.

"We continue our movement, we keep our three principles: no negotiation, no partnership and no legitimacy (for the army), until we bring down the regime," a protester told AFP. , Asma Harzaoui, in Khartoum.

"The soldiers in the barracks", shouted the crowd while heading towards the presidential palace in the center of Khartoum, where sits the head of the army.

Authorities had blocked three bridges linking the capital to its suburbs and installed a riot control device including water cannons. The police fired tear gas canisters to try to disperse the crowd around the palace, according to an AFP journalist.

In Omdurman, in the north-western suburbs of Khartoum, the demonstrators erected barricades and the security forces responded by firing tear gas canisters at those who tried to cross one of the closed bridges, reported an AFP photographer. Similar scenes took place in Bahri, a northern district of the capital.

"Currently we live in a non-state, we want a real state so we are continuing our movement with thousands of demonstrations, in Khartoum, in Omdurman, in Wad Madani, in all the provinces, the whole people are in the streets “, testified a demonstrator, Momen Wad Zineb.

According to residents, hundreds of Sudanese also demonstrated on Sunday in Wad Madani and al-Obeid in the center of the country, in Kassala, Gedaref and Port Sudan in the east.

- "The fall of the regime" -

"The people want the fall of the regime", chanted the demonstrators, using the slogan of the Arab Spring of 2011.

On Tuesday, a year after the putsch during which the army chief arrested the civilian leaders with whom he had agreed to share power in 2019, thousands of people marched in different cities.

Faced with a mobilization of an unprecedented scale for months, no shots rang out but a demonstrator died, "overthrown by a military vehicle".

On Sunday, protesters waved portraits of slain protesters and Sudanese flags.

A year after the putsch, no observer imagines possible the holding of the elections promised in the summer of 2023 and no political figure seems ready to join the civilian government announced by General Burhane.

The pro-democracy camp fears a return to the old regime of General Omar el-Bashir. As proof of this, many Islamists have returned to the positions they held within the Islamic-military power that reigned over Sudan from 1989 to 2019.

- Inflation and shortages -

On Saturday, several thousand Islamists demonstrated in front of the UN delegation in Khartoum, denouncing as "interference" the international mediations which are trying to relaunch the democratic transition.

Sudan, one of the poorest countries in the world, with the army almost always in charge since independence, continues to sink into economic and political slump.

Tribal conflicts are on the rise there because, say the experts, of the security vacuum created by the coup d'etat in this country where the question of access to land is very sensitive, agriculture and livestock represent 43% of jobs and 30% of GDP.

Between three-digit inflation and shortages, a third of the 45 million Sudanese suffer from hunger, 50% more than a year ago, according to the World Food Programme.