Sudan police on standby to suppress ‘illegal’ protests

By Mohammed Amin

KHARTOUM (AA) - Sudanese police are on standby to suppress any “illegal” demonstrations, Sudanese Oil Minister Ahmed Bilal Osman said Tuesday.

Addressing a graduation ceremony for police cadets in Khartoum, Osman claimed that Sudanese opposition parties had “exploited” the country’s difficult economic circumstances to “sow violence and overthrow the government”.

“Certain opposition groups have attempted to exploit these [economic] hardships in order to aggravate the situation and come to power through illegal and undemocratic means,” he said.

Elsewhere in the country, meanwhile, hundreds of people reportedly took to the streets for renewed demonstrations.

According to multiple eyewitnesses, several professional syndicates held anti-regime sit-ins, including lawyers in the city of Nyala and teachers at Sudan’s Al-Gazira University.

Sudan has been rocked by popular protests for the last two months, with demonstrators decrying President Omar al-Bashir’s failure to remedy the country’s chronic economic woes.

A nation of 40 million, Sudan has struggled to recover from the loss of some three quarters of its oil output -- its main source of foreign currency -- since South Sudan seceded in 2011.