Content warning: mention of injury, death
Today was an incredibly painful day in Sudan. Seven revolutionaries were killed in the protests, and many other protestors are badly injured and fighting for their lives. Since the coup on October 25th, 2021, 71 revolutionaries have been killed. The photo above is of five of the young revolutionaries killed yesterday; their names are: Sirajaldeen Ahmed Abdallah, Mudawi Diab, Osman Abdallah, Hassan Ibrahim, and ElHaj Malik.
The military is ramping up the violence, and it is only going to get worse. Hospitals in Khartoum have been getting attacked for weeks now, medics are regularly beaten, tear gas deployed inside the premises, and injured protestors arrested (as in kidnapped from their hospital beds). A massive hike in electricity prices recently shows the regime has a cash problem. The recent killing of a police officer was blamed on a young revolutionary, who has been arrested. It’s clear to most Sudanese that the killing was carried out by elements of the regime to justify the barbaric use of violence, including the use of anti-aircraft weapons against human bodies, sound bombs, live ammunition, and the deliberate firing of tear gas canisters at the heads and faces of protestors. Today all the deaths were by bullets but a lot of deaths in recent weeks have been due to trauma from the impact of gas canisters to the head). Resistance committee members in the last week have faced an even more aggressive than usual campaign of arrests.
In response to the bloody day, and the escalating repression the revolutionary forces today announced two days of mass civil disobedience, starting Tuesday, January 18th in preparation for a general strike. Doctors unions also announced full withdrawal for three days (January 18, 19, & 20) from all military and security-owned hospitals, and a strike of three days from “cold”/ non-urgent cases in all hospitals.
—Sara Abbas
Khartoum State Resistance Committees Coordination; Joint statement, January 17, 2022
We cannot retreat, the price of this journey was and still is our lifetimes, and know, revolutionaries of the world, that we are still steadfast and we are still victorious and we are still confident that we will win our battle and the revolution against the rotten bloody regime.
Men and women revolutionaries, Our Rebel People:
A new massacre has been added to the massacres of the military coup d’état against the Sudanese people. Until now, we have lost 7 revolutionaries [today] and we consider them martyrs who live among us. Until right this moment, we are still counting our wounded; there are many serious injuries with live bullets and tear gas canisters aimed at the faces of the revolutionaries. Daily, the coup council and its militia allies reveal to the world and to the Sudanese who wrongly imagine some good will come out of this, that the council is just a gang that calls itself a state. They steal from us our resources to kill us, they arm their soldiers at the expense of bread, health, and education in order to spread bullets in the streets. This is not our army and these are the enemies of the Sudanese, and it is necessary to resist them until we win or they rule an empty country after they kill us all. This is our covenant with the martyrs.
We call on all the revolutionaries to completely close Khartoum and erect barricades everywhere. Our barricades terrify them and remind them that we are the strongest and largest army in this country. We call on all professionals, employees, and workers everywhere to establish their committees in the workplace and to coordinate well between those committees and the resistance committees in preparation for the general strike and the implementation of civil disobedience on the 18th and 19th [of January]. We call on the revolutionaries in all the neighborhoods of the country to prepare for a long tour in which we defeat the militias, based on our good preparation of our organization, on the continuation of the announced [civil disobedience] schedules, and on the arrangement of adhoc schedules according to what the women and men revolutionaries see [happening] in their neighborhoods. We will publish our next steps in response to the January 17 massacre. This massacre will not go unnoticed. We are the generation that was destined to write the end of the military coups, and we will not postpone this battle. The action is what you see and not what you hear.
NB: Emphasis in bold added by Sara Abbas.
Featured Image Credit: Photo by Hassan el-Hamalawy. Image modified by Tempest.