Sudan: Down with the Military Coup!
For committees of action, general strike and popular insurrection to defeat the putschists!
Statement by Michael Pröbsting, 25 October 2021 (UTC 18:30)
1. Today, the Sudanese army command carried out a coup d'état. Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, five senior government figures and others have been arrested and transferred to unknown places. General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the coup leader, later announced the dissolution of the transitional government and the sovereign council and declared a nationwide state of emergency. He also announced the removal of state governors, saying elections will be held in July 2023!
2. In response, tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of the capital, Khartoum, its twin city of Omdurman as well as other cities. They are building barricades, blocking streets, and setting fire to tires. Sudan’s central bank employees have already started a strike and others will follow soon. Among the most popular slogans are “The people are stronger, stronger” and “Retreat is not an option!”. Unions support the protests, and the Communist Party calls on workers to go on strike to stop the “full military coup”. At least three demonstrators have been already killed by repression forces and dozens injured.
3. We denounce the military coup and fully supports all forms of mass struggle. It is crucial that workers and popular organizations all over the world build an international solidarity movement with the mass protests against the coup. There can be no doubt that this is a serious attempt by the army command to liquidate all remaining achievements of the revolution in 2019. We demand the immediate release of all those arrested. We think it is urgent to build committees of action and armed self-defense units in workplaces and neighborhoods. In order to defeat the coup, it is important to launch a general strike and to prepare for an armed uprising. Likewise, activists should develop agitation among the soldiers in order to split the army.
4. Our defense of the Sudanese government against the coup does not mean that we support their politics in any way. Quite the opposite, for more than two years the government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok worked hand-in-hand with the same generals who have carried out the coup today. They called the people to stop the mass mobilizations in summer 2019. They signed agreements with the imperialist International Monetary Fund which deepened the colonial subjugation of the country. They also supported the cynical policy of “normalization” with the racist Apartheid state Israel. In other words, the forces supporting the Hamdok government are politically responsible for the aborted revolution in 2019 and now they have become victim of their own failure.
5. Albeit no public information has appeared so far on this issue, we have no doubt that the coup has been secretly supported (or even instigated) by Egypt’s dictatorship of General Sisi as well as by the monarchist rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These powers have very close relations with Sudan’s army command, and it is nearly impossible that General al-Burhan would have moved without approval by his closest ally. These forces were also behind the recent coup in Tunisia, the coup in Egypt in July 2013 and General Haftar’s reactionary civil war in Libya. It is also at least noteworthy that the coup took place only days after US Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa, Jeffrey Feltman, visited Sudan and met with military and civilian leaders.
6. The coup is a powerful lesson that a revolution which stops in the middle can easily end in a counterrevolution. The RCIT warned already in summer 2019 that the failure to complete the revolution and to smash the criminal repression apparatus would leave the reactionary ruling class in power. In a statement on 8 July 2019, we warned against the deal of the leaders of the Forces of Freedom and Change with the army command: “The Glorious Revolution is in danger of being sold out!” We said: “We repeat what we said in our last statement that “any negotiations with the army command are a dangerous diversion. Authentic freedom and democracy cannot be achieved through a collaborative effort with the army command – but only by defeating and removing it!” Given the fact that the army command retains a very strong position in the transition council, that all generals remain in place, and that they retain a monopoly of weaponry – they can remove the opposition representatives at any time.” (See links below)
7. The only way forward is to stop the coup and to replace it with an authentic workers’ and peasants’ government based on popular councils and militias. Such a government would serve the interests of the popular masses and would remove power and wealth from the hands of the small corrupt elite of super-rich politicians, businessmen and army generals. It would also expropriate the foreign imperialist corporations which are exploiting semi-colonial Sudan.
8. We draw attention to the fact that only three months ago, Tunisia’s President Kais Saied carried out a similar coup and currently tries to build a dictatorship which threatens the democratic liberties resulting from the Revolution in January 2011. Add to this the military coup in Burma-Myanmar in February this year, the brutal suppression of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong by the Stalinist-capitalist dictatorship in Beijing, or the repression of right-wing governments against popular protests in Chile and Colombia. All these events reflect a similar global process: in a period of deepening crisis of global capitalism and the decay of the old imperialist world order, the vanguard battalions of the counterrevolution attempt to consolidate the power of the ruling class by suppressing democracy for the people by brutal and totalitarian means. Hence, it is crucial to link the mass struggle against the coup in Sudan with the popular resistance against dictatorships in other countries in the Arab world (e.g. Egypt, Tunisia, Syria) as well as in other regions of the world.
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We draw reader’s attention to the following statements:
RCIT: Sudan: The Deal with the Military Council is a Sell-Out of the Revolution! https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/sudan-the-deal-with-the-military-council-is-a-sell-out-of-the-revolution/
RCIT: Sudan: Fight Back against the Generals with a General Strike! International solidarity with the Sudanese people! 04 June 2019, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/sudan-fight-back-against-the-generals-with-a-general-strike/
ISL: What's behind the Israel-Sudan Normalization Deal? 24.10.2020, https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/what-s-behind-the-israel-sudan-normalization-deal/
For more statements see the following sub-page: https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/africa-and-middle-east/collection-of-articles-on-2nd-wave-of-great-arab-revolution/