EIGHT SENIOR military officers are to be charged in Sudan with crimes against humanity over their part in the mass killing of over 150 protesters on 3rd June.
The continuous mass actions by the Sudanese workers and youth have forced the junta to announce the charges after investigating the massacre, which was carried out to try and force the masses of Sudan to stop demonstrating and fighting for a government that represents their interests.
In fact masses of Sudanese workers have condemned the investigators for not going far enough into the organisation of the mass murder that took place and are demanding that the mass demonstrations continue.
Under a new power-sharing accord between the opposition and the military, there is supposed to be a fully independent investigation once a new government is in place.
Fath al-Rahman Saeed, head of the committee appointed to investigate the massacre, gave the initials of those indicted for crimes against humanity, but he refused to name them. They are still being protected.
He told a news conference that three officers had violated orders by moving security forces into the area of the sit-in protest outside the defence ministry, when in fact they had been ordered to clear a different area of the city.
This has been taken as a move to try and shield the top military from the charges being made by the masses that the general staff ordered the massacre of men, women and children that took place.
Saeed tried to insist that Security Forces ‘broke the law and entered the sit-in area … They removed the barricades, fired tear gas and fired intense and random bullets that led to the killing and wounding of protesters and the burning of tents’.
The 3rd June massacre had the opposite effect on the mass movement to that intended by the military chiefs. Instead of cowing the masses, it enraged them to take to the streets in even bigger numbers.
Tens of thousands of protesters returned to the streets a few weeks later to stage the biggest demonstration since Bashir’s overthrow, forcing the generals to resume talks on a power-sharing government. On Saturday, dozens of protesters chanted slogans against the investigatory committee in Khartoum’s Burri district.
One of the opposition leaders, Ismail al-Taj from the Sudanese Professionals’ Association, said the inquiry findings were based on inaccurate data about casualties, and had sent a ‘shock to the Sudanese street and the regional and international communities’.
Sudanese demonstrators have flocked to the streets in the capital Khartoum to protest against the findings of the official investigation that put the death toll from the June raid on the sit-in protest at no more than 87.
The demonstrators and opponents of Sudan’s military rulers on Saturday dismissed the figure for the dead and wounded of the June 3rd massacre as being far too low and demanded an independent investigation.
Demonstrators chanted slogans against the investigative committee and burned tyres as they vented their anger at the findings of the ‘cover-up’ military probe.
Opposition medics insist that at least 127 people were killed and 400 people wounded as security forces fired live ammunition at protesters, who were demanding that the military cede power and the so-called Transitional Military Council be broken up.
Instead, the generals also moved to consolidate their power and faced bigger popular protests, which used defensive violence on many occasions in the face of a heavy-handed crackdown.
Many Sudanese workers are insisting that the military will never give up their power and that a power-sharing agreement with them is impossible to achieve.
Egypt and the oil-rich Persian Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, regard Sudan as a strategically important country in the region and that the army must keep control.
More and more workers are demanding that the trade unions must form a workers’ government as the only way forward for the country and its working people.
