SUDANESE revolutionaries called for more protests and civil disobedience today in response to the massacre of at least seven demonstrators by security forces on Monday.

Police fired on huge rallies against the generals behind October’s military coup in Khartoum, bringing the total killed since the junta seized power to at least 71 (some organisations claim 75). Over 100 more people were wounded in Monday’s crackdown, according to the Sudan Doctors Committee, while police said 77 were arrested.

A US-negotiated power-sharing agreement between the army and the civilian transitional government, which was rejected by the democracy movement, is collapsing following the resignation of prime minister Abdalla Hamdok at the start of the month.

Coup leader Abdel-Fattah Burhan has announced a fact-finding probe into the latest killings, but the Communist Party of Sudan said mass demonstrations and a campaign of civil disobedience should continue until “democratic civilian rule is won.” 

It called for political strikes and for mass organisations to develop a more coherent political programme in the face of regional and UN pressure for a compromise with the military, which it said was engaged in “a hostile conspiracy against the December revolution” which began in 2018 against dictator Omar al-Bashir. Mr Bashir was overthrown by the army following mass protests early in 2019, but generals have since obstructed any transition to democratic government, culminating in their October 25 seizure of power.

The Sudanese Journalists Network said the junta could not evade responsibility for the deaths, pointing out that security forces have immunity under an emergency decree issued by generals and that peaceful protests are routinely attacked, including with military-grade weaponry including rocket launchers and Kalashnikov assault rifles. 

It listed violations including what appear to be the deliberate killing of protesters by snipers through shots to the “head, chest and abdomen,” Sudan Doctors Committee reports indicating use of munitions that explode inside the body, and post-protest raids on hospitals in which the injured are abducted from their beds and nurses and doctors beaten up if they try to intervene.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell condemned the regime’s attacks on democracy protesters today, saying appeals to coup leaders to refrain from deadly violence had fallen on deaf ears.