Local, grassroots ‘resistance committees’ organised protests and marches to remove former President Omar al-Bashir.
It was late evening and the sit-in outside the military headquarters was buzzing with people. Several trade union groups were holding events, while the big screens set-up by the protesters in the area displayed an image of Ayman Mao, a hip-hop artist who was due to play a concert the
following day.
In the crowd outside the engineers association tent was Roaa Ahmed, who first took part in protests against Sudan’s longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir in February, when she helped establish a so-called “resistance committee” in the Street 60 neighbourhood in east Khartoum.
The 20-year-old student, who has been attending the ongoing sit-in regularly since it began on April 6, said the committee was planning more activities to pressure Sudan’s military leaders to hand over power to civilians.
“The revolution has not succeeded yet. We want to start working again,” she said.
Ahmed organises one of many such resistance groups – informal, grassroots, neighbourhood-wide networks of residents who opposed al-Bashir’s rule. They have used non-violent tactics such as peaceful protests, graffiti writing and distributed pamphlets to express their opposition to the
government.
While the ongoing uprising that led to al-Bashir’s removal in a military coup on April 11 has been guided by the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA,) a network of independent trade unions, it lacked representatives on the ground. People received the SPA’s messages via Facebook and
Twitter and then organised protests and marches themselves via the committees.
When the SPA first called for anti-al-Bashir demonstrations in Street 60 in early February, Ahmed decided to join. She went to the meeting point with a friend and waited for a few hours but too few people arrived and a march failed to materialise.
“On the same day, I sent a message in a Telegram group of students from my faculty asking them to private message me if they live in Arkweet and Al-Mamoura neighbourhoods,” she said.
Ahmed received replies from colleagues living in those neighbourhoods, who were all eager to take part in the protests. They decided the first protest would be held on a side street in Arkweet.
