Sudan coup 2021: Live updates
Live Updates
The UN has called for the release of deposed Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who has been under house arrest following a coup on Monday.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Hamdok "must be released immediately" as the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting on the putsch in Sudan.
On Monday soldiers detained Hamdok, his ministers and civilian members of Sudan's ruling council, who have been heading a transition to full civilian rule following the 2019 overthrow of longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir.
“In many ways, this is a miscalculation that the military has made,” Jonas Horner, senior Sudan analyst at the Crisis Group, told Middle East Eye.
“I think they underestimated the resilience and determination that the street would show in the face of this.”
“The military's strategic approach appears to have largely been based on creating conditions where people felt that the government was not responding to their needs,” he added.
This, Horner argued, not only shows a lack of understanding of what people in the streets wanted, but also “reflects how existential this transition to a democratic participatory government is for the military”.
“The military's been in power in Sudan for 52 of the 65 years since independence. And so they're very reticent about giving up power.”
The office of deposed Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok has said the premier was "the executive authority recognised by the Sudanese people and the world" and called for his release from house arrest.
Following on from a speech by coup-leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, in which he said Hamdok was at his residence, the Facebook page associated with the ousted ruler warned there was no alternative to protests, strikes and civil disobedience to counter Monday's coup.
The statement also called for the release of other arrested political leaders.
Sudanese ambassadors in France, Belgium and Switzerland all defected on Tuesday, saying their embassies belonged to the "Sudanese people and their revolution".
The Sudan Ambassadors Association, a group which reportedly includes diplomats in Sudan and abroad, said in a statement on Tuesday that it rejected the coup.
Writing for Middle East Eye today, historian Willow Berridge argues that "Burhan may be hoping to borrow from Abdel-Fattah Sisi’s playbook for crushing democracy, hoping to run an emasculated one-party system while the security and military apparatus inherited from the old regime rules de facto."
The coup, she adds, represents a cynical power grab by a cadre of military officers desperate to preserve the army’s economic privileges.
"Even if al-Burhan has overplayed his hand, however, it will be difficult for him to retreat, having now forfeited the limited popular legitimacy he obtained from his pseudo-championing of the revolution by arresting his civilian counterparts. The risk is that the military fall back on the only form of legitimacy they have left: raw force."
Calling for "genuine pressure" on regional neighbours backing the interim military, she writes, "Sudan’s transition has reached its most dangerous moment."
Sudan watchers have been giving their takes on what is being described as a surreal speech from Sudan's top general.
Besides saying that Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok was staying at his house, Burhan made several other wild assertions during a nearly hour-long speech in Khartoum, including that:
- The military had not carried out a coup, but was instead trying to rectify the path of the transition.
- The armed forces ousted the government to avoid civil war.
- The armed forces gave all concessions possible to achieve Sudanese dreams.
- Prime Minister Hamdok was being kept away for his own safety, and that he was carrying on a normal life.
- He said that the emergency would be scrapped as soon as institutions are formed.
- The incoming government will have no typical politicians.
- Judicial bodies will be formed in the coming days.
- The new legislature will include young people from the revolution.
- The internet will return gradually.
In a bizarre speech, Sudan's top general, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who yesterday folded the government and declared a state of emergency, said that prime minister Abdalla Hamdok was staying at his house, and would "return home when the crisis is over".
"Yes, we arrested ministers and politicians, but not all," he told a new conference in Khartoum, adding that Hamdok was "in good health".
Sudanese people appear to be responding to calls for civil disobedience from pro-democracy groups.
Images of people blocking roads have come out of Khartoum.
In Atbara, in the north, railworkers are reportedly on strike as others demonstrate.
Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and his missing cabinet members are still being held in an unknown location, the foreign minister of Sudan's ousted government said in a message posted on the information ministry's official Facebook page on Tuesday.
With little internet and phone service, casualty reports from Sudan are scarce.
Reuters reported on Monday that seven people had been killed by gunfire, while at least 140 were wounded, citing a health ministry official.
Sudan's doctors' committee posted on Facebook on Tuesday morning that four people have been killed by armed forces. They posted on Monday that at least 80 people had been wounded.
Sudan's top general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who yesterday folded the government and declared a state of emergency, issued on Tuesday a decision to dissolve the committees managing the country's trade unions, United Arab Emirates-based TV channels Sky News Arabia and Al-Hadath reported.
We'll be following developments in Sudan live again today.
If you missed what happened yesterday, or overnight, here's our wrap from this morning.
The top lines are:
- Protesters against Sudan's military coup remained defiant on the streets on Tuesday.
- Officials from the office of the country's top general, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, said he would hold a news conference at around 11:00 GMT.
- Reuters reported that life was mainly at a standstill in the capital Khartoum, where shops and services are closed and some roads are still blocked by the army after a mostly quiet night.
- International condemnation of the country's security forces has continued, as the United States said it was suspending $700m in aid.
- The UN demanded Hamdok's "immediate release," while diplomats in New York told AFP the Security Council was expected to meet to discuss the crisis on Tuesday.
Telecommunications were interrupted in Sudan, a Reuters witness said on Tuesday, with internet and phone services severely limited in some areas for the second day in a row.
The call for a general strike could be heard from the loudspeakers of mosques in Khartoum.
Sudan's top general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan will hold a news conference later on Tuesday, officials from his office said, a day after the country's military coup.
"General Burhan will speak at a press conference at the army headquarters in Khartoum" from 1pm (11:00 GMT), the officials said.
