What happened in Sudan this week, needs to be noticed
7802 Mins Read
This was the week that Darfur came to Khartoum. For the moment at least, Sudan’s dream of a peaceful revolution is over.
In the early hours of Monday, troops belonging to a paramilitary group notorious for atrocities in Darfur in the west of Sudan broke up a two-month sit-in led by students and professionals. Dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. At the very least, 100 people have been killed, according to the association of Sudanese doctors. The real death toll is likely to be higher.
According to eye witnesses, soldiers raped women and threw the bodies of some of those killed into the Nile. An image showing militia parading a pole hung with the underwear of presumed rape victims circulated on social media, though its authenticity could not be verified. Khartoum is in lockdown with military trucks on every corner and people terrified to leave their homes. The internet — the digital umbilical chord of the civilian uprising — has been cut.
The US has lost moral authority as a democratic champion. Besides, it has long been a bit player in Sudan. The real power brokers are the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, regimes that have snuffed out democratic movements in their own countries and with no appetite to see them flourish in neighbouring states. A UN resolution to condemn Sudan’s military violence was blocked by China and Russia.
Thirty years after Chinese troops killed hundreds of students in Tiananmen Square and six years after Egyptian troops shot 800 in Tahrir Square, Sudanese soldiers have done the same in their own square in their own capital. The military is already denying that anything of the sort took place. The war for amnesia has already begun.
What is happening in Khartoum should be of intense interest to the world. It appears mostly indifferent. Not only has a massacre taken place in a capital of 5m people, but the repression of peaceful protesters also raises a fundamental question. What should people do when confronted by tyranny? In an age when democracy has few champions, can a pacific uprising ever topple a regime with guns?
