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 Re: انتفاضة البجا فى بورتسودان .. ابناء البجة يرقدون متشابكى الأيدى على الطرقات الرئيسية فى الم (Re: Mannan)
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Sudanese Police Kill Up to 20 Protesters
Sat Jan 29, 2005 09:46 AM ET
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudanese police killed up to 20 people and injured 40 on Saturday when they opened fire on a crowd of easterners demonstrating in the Red Sea city of Port Sudan, a local political leader said.
A hospital source in the city said 17 people were killed and 20 injured when police opened fire on a protest march. An official source said the death toll was lower.
Abdullah Moussa Abdullah, secretary-general of the Beja Congress in Red Sea state, told Reuters by telephone from Port Sudan that he had seen 17 bodies in the hospital morgue and had the names of three other people killed.
Moussa said he was present in the morning when some 300 to 400 members of the Beja ethnic group gathered to prepare for a march to demand that the Khartoum government start negotiations with the Beja on sharing power and the country's resources.
"There was a special police unit that appeared and just opened fire at them before they even moved. They fired at their ######### and bodies, not even in the air," he said. Three children were among those killed, he added.
The source at the hospital said all of the wounds were from bullets. "About 17 were killed and around 20 injured," added the source, who declined to be named.
Three days ago members of eastern tribes, mostly the Beja, presented a list of demands to the Red Sea state governor, including wealth and power sharing. They warned they would take unspecified actions if the demands were not met within 72 hours.
"This time was up today and they started a march toward the Wali's (governor's) office," the hospital source said, adding the police stopped the march before it got very far.
The source said seven soldiers were injured by stones, but only civilians sustained gunshot wounds.
Moussa said the Beja Congress, a local ethnic-based party with a military wing, had asked the governor of Red Sea state to withdraw security forces from residential areas and the governor had complied. "It is relatively calm now," he added.
The interior ministry declined to comment on the numbers killed but said in a statement: "A number of civilians tried to create a state of chaos in the town ... and the police forces moved to challenge them."
Moussa said the regional security committee has ordered a curfew throughout the city with effect from 6 p.m. (1500 GMT) on Saturday until 6 a.m. (0300 GMT) on Sunday.
The minister of finance in Port Sudan, Ali Mahmoud, told Reuters by telephone that a number of the demonstrators this morning started #####ng shops and the police had intervened.
"Some were killed but not as many as 17," he said. He said he did not know of shots fired or how the people were killed.
"There were some little clashes between the police and those making chaos," he said.
One police official in Port Sudan said many were killed and injured by gun shots. "There was shooting in the center of the town at the demonstration," the official said on condition of anonymity.
The Beja Congress, like other Sudanese opposition groups, accuses the Khartoum government of neglecting the remote regions of the country in favor of the center, which is the powerbase of the traditional political elite.
They see the agreement this month between the government and the southern rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement as a model for their own regions. The agreement gives the southerners a share of their region's oil revenues.
The World Food Program says some areas of eastern Sudan, where the Beja live, have higher malnutrition rates than the crisis-hit western Darfur region.
The Beja Congress has launched limited military operations in the east, but has made little impact on Khartoum. (Additional reporting by Jonathan Wright in Cairo)
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Mannan
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