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 Sudan's Opposition Leaders calling for strikes and civil disobedience
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Sudan's opposition tightens screws on Omar al-Bashir
Leaders sign pact calling for strikes, demonstrations and civil disobedience to topple president in an echo of Arab spring
David Smith in Johannesburg
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 July 2012 11.41 EDT
Opposition leaders in Sudan have called for strikes, demonstrations and civil disobedience to topple President Omar al-Bashir, one of Africa's longest-serving leaders.
The move suggests growing momentum in the anti-government protests that are seeking to emulate the Arab spring.
On Wednesday, the country's main opposition groups signed a pact calling for "collective, peaceful political struggle in all its forms … to overthrow the regime" including "strikes, peaceful demonstrations, sit-ins and civil disobedience".
Supporters outside the National Unionist party's office in the capital, Khartoum, chanted "revolution, revolution until victory," before the deal was signed. They called for more demonstrations on Friday.
Sudan lost three quarters of its oil output after South Sudan gained independence last year, prompting the government to impose deeply unpopular austerity measures. There have been street demonstrations over food and other price rises across the country for more than two weeks.
Protesters have used Facebook and Twitter and chanted the widespread Arab spring refrain: "The people want the downfall of the regime."
Last Sunday, police fired teargas and used batons to break up a protest of more than 250 people in the Ombada shantytown area, one of Khartoum's poorest neighbourhoods, witnesses said. Until now the opposition parties, often seen as divided and impotent, had given little backing to the protests, which were mostly student-led and limited to a few hundred people. But they represent the biggest revolt against Bashir since he came to power in a bloodless coup 23 years ago.
Farouk Abu Issa, head of the National Consensus Forces, an umbrella group of opposition parties, said the pact would generate more such shows of anger. "We want to rally our people, organise our people so that they stand fast with us in achieving our goal in toppling this regime," he told Reuters.
Bashir's regime is already under pressure, fighting insurgencies in the western Darfur region and two southern border states, as well as continuing its standoff with South Sudan which has threatened to escalate into all-out war.
The opposition parties agreed that if Bashir and his ruling National Congress party were ousted, a ceasefire would be declared on all fronts.
They pledged to carry out a "democratic alternative programme" after the fall of Bashir's government. They would cancel laws restricting freedoms, hold a national constitutional conference, prepare the country for free elections and carry out a variety of other reforms.
Government officials have dismissed the demonstrations as the work of a handful of agitators whose aims are not shared by the majority of Sudanese and blamed "Zionist institutions" for stoking the unrest.
Rabie Abdelati, an information ministry official, told Reuters: "They have no support from the people. We are not bothering about what they are saying."
It has responded forcefully, however. An estimated 1,000 protesters have been arrested and hundreds hurt in the demonstrations, according to the British-based charity Peace Direct. Some journalists have also been arrested and deported after attempting to cover the unrest.
Among the opposition leaders who signed Wednesday's deal was Hassan al-Turabi, head of the Popular Congress party, once one of the most powerful figures in Sudanese politics until he fell out with Bashir in the late 1990s.
They also included the general secretary of the Umma party, whose leader Sadiq al-Mahdi was elected prime minister in 1986 after mass protests, mainly against food inflation, ousted the country's military ruler a year earlier.
Bashir is wanted by the international criminal court for war crimes in Darfur. Sudan has dismissed the charges as baseless and politically motivated.
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