LIBERATION (formerly the Movement for Colonial Freedom) has followed with concern the alarming news emerging from Sudan since Monday of an apparent military coup which has ousted Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok and led to scores of arrests as well as a violent crackdown on the streets of the capital Khartoum.

The news of these worrying developments began to be communicated by progressive activists within the country in the early morning of Monday after military forces moved to seize the Sudanese radio and television broadcasting headquarters and abducted Hamdok to an unknown location after he apparently refused to sign a statement endorsing the military takeover — he has now been released and returned to his home under tight security.

Several other civilian cabinet ministers and pro-government politicians were also arrested and many remain detained amid an internet shutdown in the country.

The military, alongside units of notorious Rapid Support Forces militia, have deployed throughout Khartoum with reinforcements reportedly arriving from all over Sudan, closing down bridges and main thoroughfares as well as moving on the addresses of known civilian pro-government figures.

Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the military head of the hitherto power-sharing transitional ruling council, has taken to the airwaves to dissolve the government and declare a state of emergency. Progressive politicians and activists have signalled their alarm and warned of an imminent wave of bloody repression by the military.

Today’s events follow weeks of turmoil, including several thwarted attempts at a military takeover and significant demonstrations of support for the civilian representatives of Sudan’s Sovereign Council and for the full implementation of the scheduled democratic transition.

Only days ago, huge demonstrations took place in Khartoum to mark the anniversary of the October 21 Glorious Sudanese Popular Revolution of 1964.

Against this febrile backdrop, civilian members of the country’s transitional Sovereign Council were becoming increasingly agitated by the seeming intransigence of their military counterparts despite the clearly laid down and mandated schedule for transition to civilian rule and the holding of elections by 2023, as well as by issues surrounding the handover of the former tyrant Omar al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court to stand trial for crimes against humanity.

The coup came just days after al-Burhan gave his assurances to Hamdok, in the presence of visiting US special envoy Jeffrey Feltman, that the military would adhere to the scheduled transfer of power.

Unfortunately, Sudan is a country that has borne the brunt of colonialism and imperialism’s malign influences. The significant era of brutal subjugation at the hands of the British empire, along with the continued considerable geostrategic interests in controlling Sudan’s future course, has left the country with a perpetually weak infrastructure — acutely vulnerable to instability, Islamic fundamentalism and tyranny. The result has been an almost constant cycle of despotism and military coups.

Developments like those witnessed on October 25 serve only to benefit the same aforementioned malign interests. The only forces that stand to gain from the halting of the democratic transition process in Sudan are those of reaction in the country and wider region, as well as imperialism led by the US and Britain.

Liberation unequivocally condemns the military coup in Sudan and calls for its immediate cessation and the return of the army and paramilitaries to their barracks.

We call upon British MPs to add their voices to this condemnation as well as to support the upholding of Sudan’s democratic process. There must be no accommodation nor leeway afforded to this wholly illegitimate military administration by the international community, including Britain and the US.

While horrified by the reports of the violence unleashed upon those who have attempted to peacefully resist the coup, Liberation wholeheartedly supports the calls made by groups like the Sudanese Professionals Association for people to take to the streets and defy the military usurpers in a campaign of civil disobedience.

We encourage all progressives to do the same: the Sudanese people must not be abandoned at this, their most recent of dark nights.

www.liberationorg.co.uk.