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44 — VANGUARD, FRIDAY, APRIL 12, 2019<br />
Sudan’s Bashir ousted by military;<br />
protesters demand civilian govt<br />
*Army promises two-year rule<br />
*Ousted President may be tried by ICC<br />
PRESIDENT Omar al-<br />
Bashir, who ruled<br />
Sudan in autocratic style for<br />
30 years, was overthrown<br />
and arrested in a coup by<br />
the armed forces on Thursday,<br />
but protesters took to<br />
the streets demanding the<br />
military hand over power to<br />
civilians.<br />
The ouster of Bashir, 75,<br />
followed months of demonstrations<br />
against his rule.<br />
In an address on state<br />
television, Defence Minister<br />
Awad Mohamed Ahmed<br />
Ibn Auf, announced a twoyear<br />
period of military rule<br />
to be followed by presidential<br />
elections.<br />
He said Bashir was being<br />
detained in a “safe place”<br />
and a military council would<br />
now run the country. He did<br />
not say who would head it.<br />
Ibn Auf announced a state<br />
of emergency, a nationwide<br />
ceasefire and the suspension<br />
of the constitution.<br />
Seated on a gold-upholstered<br />
armchair, he said<br />
Sudan’s airspace would be<br />
closed for 24 hours and border<br />
crossings shut until further<br />
notice.<br />
The main organiser of protests<br />
against Bashir, the<br />
Sudanese Professionals Association<br />
(SPA), rejected the<br />
minister’s plans. It called on<br />
protesters to maintain a sitin<br />
outside the defence ministry<br />
that began on Saturday.<br />
Shortly afterwards, thousands<br />
of demonstrators<br />
packed the streets of central<br />
Khartoum, their mood turning<br />
from jubilation at Bashir’s<br />
expected departure to<br />
anger at the announcement<br />
of a military-led transition,<br />
a Reuters witness said.<br />
“Fall, again!” many chanted,<br />
adapting an earlier anti-<br />
Bashir slogan of “Fall, that’s<br />
all!”.<br />
Sudanese sources told<br />
Reuters that Bashir was at<br />
the presidential residence<br />
under “heavy guard”. A son<br />
of Sadiq al-Mahdi, the head<br />
of the main opposition<br />
Umma Party, told al-Hadath<br />
TV that Bashir was being<br />
held with “a number of<br />
leaders of the terrorist Muslim<br />
Brotherhood group”.<br />
Bashir has been indicted<br />
by the International Criminal<br />
Court in The Hague and<br />
is facing an arrest warrant<br />
over allegations of genocide<br />
in Sudan’s Darfur region<br />
during an insurgency that<br />
began in 2003 and led to<br />
death of an estimated<br />
300,000 people.<br />
Despite the arrest warrant<br />
Bashir defied the court by<br />
visiting several ICC member<br />
states. Diplomatic rows<br />
broke out when he went to<br />
South Africa in 2015 and Jordan<br />
in 2017 and both failed<br />
to arrest him.<br />
The downfall of Bashir fol-<br />
lows the toppling this month<br />
of Algerian strongman Abdelaziz<br />
Bouteflika, also following<br />
mass protests after<br />
two decades in power.<br />
MILITARY RULE<br />
AGAIN?<br />
Names of Bashir’s possible<br />
successors that have<br />
been circulating include the<br />
defence minister, an ex-military<br />
intelligence chief, also<br />
an Islamist, and former army<br />
chief of staff Emad al-Din<br />
Adawi. Adawi is said to be<br />
favoured by regional neighbours<br />
at odds with Bashir<br />
over his Islamist leanings.<br />
Omar Saleh Sennar, a senior<br />
SPA member, said the<br />
Julian Assange is seen in a police van after he was arrested by<br />
British police outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, April<br />
11, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls<br />
group expected to negotiate<br />
with the military over a<br />
transfer of power.<br />
“We will only accept a transitional<br />
civilian government,”<br />
Sennar told Reuters.<br />
Kamal Omar, 38, another<br />
demonstrator, said: “We will<br />
continue our sit-in until we<br />
prevail”.<br />
Ibn Auf announced the<br />
release of all political prisoners,<br />
and images circulated<br />
of freed detainees joining<br />
the protests.<br />
Troops were deployed in<br />
strategic areas of the capital<br />
and also stormed the headquarters<br />
of Bashir’s Islamic<br />
Movement, the main component<br />
of the ruling National<br />
Congress Party.<br />
In the eastern cities of<br />
Port Sudan and Kassala,<br />
protesters attacked the offices<br />
of Sudan’s intelligence<br />
and security service, witnesses<br />
said.Bashir, a former<br />
paratrooper who seized<br />
power in a bloodless coup<br />
in 1989, has been a divisive<br />
figure who has managed his<br />
way through one internal<br />
crisis after another while<br />
withstanding attempts by<br />
the West to weaken him.<br />
Sudan has suffered prolonged<br />
periods of isolation<br />
since 1993<br />
when the United States<br />
added Bashir’s government<br />
to its list of terrorism sponsors<br />
for harbouring Islamist<br />
militants. Washington<br />
followed up with sanctions<br />
four years later.<br />
A long civil war with<br />
southern separatists ended<br />
in 2005 and South Sudan<br />
became an independent<br />
country in 2011.<br />
Since December, Sudan<br />
has been rocked by persistent<br />
protests sparked by the<br />
government’s attempt to<br />
raise the price of bread, and<br />
an economic crisis that has<br />
led to fuel and cash shortages<br />
The unrest escalated<br />
since the weekend, when<br />
thousands of demonstrators<br />
began camping out<br />
outside the defence ministry<br />
compound, where<br />
Bashir’s residence is located<br />
Ċlashes erupted between<br />
soldiers trying to protect the<br />
protesters and intelligence<br />
and security personnel trying<br />
to disperse them.<br />
Around 20 people were<br />
killed since the sit-in began.<br />
Activists abroad pressed<br />
for Sudan to turn over Bashir<br />
to the International Criminal<br />
Court.<br />
“Victims of the gravest<br />
crimes in Darfur should not<br />
have to wait any longer for<br />
justice” said Jehanne Henry,<br />
associate director at the<br />
Africa division of Human<br />
Rights Watch.<br />
Wikileaks co-founder, Assange<br />
arrested in London<br />
*To be extradited to US<br />
BRITISH<br />
police<br />
dragged Julian Assange<br />
out of the Ecuadorean<br />
embassy on Thursday after<br />
his seven-year asylum was<br />
revoked, paving the way for<br />
his extradition to the United<br />
States for one of the biggest<br />
ever leaks of classified information.<br />
The frail-looking WikiLeaks<br />
founder, with white hair and<br />
a long beard, was carried<br />
head first out of the embassy<br />
in London shortly after 0900<br />
GMT by at least seven men<br />
to a waiting police van, after<br />
shouting “This is unlawful,<br />
I’m not leaving.”<br />
British Prime Minister<br />
Theresa May hailed the<br />
news in parliament, to cheers<br />
and cries of “Hear, hear!” from<br />
lawmakers.<br />
“The whole House will welcome<br />
the news this morning<br />
that the Metropolitan Police<br />
have arrested Julian Assange,<br />
arrested for breach of bail after<br />
nearly seven years in the<br />
Ecuadorean embassy,” May<br />
said. Appearing before a London<br />
court, Assange said he<br />
was not guilty of failing to surrender<br />
in 2012. District judge<br />
Michael Snow, who cast Assange<br />
as a “narcissist”, convicted<br />
him of skipping bail.<br />
Sentencing will be at a later<br />
date. Assange’s lawyer in<br />
Quito said his life would be<br />
in danger if he were to be extradited<br />
to the United States.<br />
Police said they had arrested<br />
Assange, 47, after<br />
being invited into the embassy<br />
following the Ecuadorean<br />
government’s withdrawal<br />
of asylum. Assange<br />
was carried out of the building<br />
carrying a copy of Gore<br />
Vidal’s “History of The National<br />
Security State”, which<br />
he continued reading in<br />
court.<br />
Just hours later, U.S.<br />
prosecutors said they had<br />
charged Assange with conspiracy<br />
in trying to access a<br />
classified U.S. government<br />
computer with former U.S.<br />
Army intelligence analyst<br />
Chelsea Manning in 2010.<br />
The arrests, after nearly seven<br />
years holed up in a few<br />
cramped rooms at the embassy,<br />
mark one of the most sensational<br />
turns in a tumultuous<br />
life that has transformed<br />
the Australian programmer<br />
into a rebel wanted by the<br />
United States.<br />
EU agrees to another<br />
Brexit extension<br />
EUROPEAN Union leaders have granted the<br />
UK a six-month extension to Brexit, after latenight<br />
talks in Brussels.<br />
The new deadline - 31 October - averts the prospect<br />
of the UK having to leave the EU without a<br />
deal on Friday, as MPs are still deadlocked over a<br />
deal.<br />
European Council President Donald Tusk said his<br />
“message to British friends” was “please do not<br />
waste this time”.<br />
Theresa May, who had wanted a shorter delay,<br />
said the UK would still aim to leave the EU as soon<br />
as possible.<br />
The UK must now hold European elections in<br />
May, or leave on 1 June without a deal.<br />
The prime minister will later make a statement on<br />
the Brussels summit to the House of Commons,<br />
while talks with the Labour Party, aimed at reaching<br />
consensus on how to handle Brexit, are set to<br />
continue.<br />
Mrs May tweeted: “The choices we now face are<br />
stark and the timetable is clear. So we must now<br />
press on at pace with our efforts to reach a consensus<br />
on a deal that is in the national interest.”<br />
So far, MPs have rejected the withdrawal agreement<br />
Mrs May reached with other European leaders<br />
last year and they have voted against leaving<br />
the EU without a deal.<br />
Ex-Pope blames 1960s<br />
revolution for sex abuse<br />
RETIRED Pope Benedict XVI has published a<br />
letter which blames clerical sex abuse on the<br />
“all-out sexual freedom” of the 1960s.<br />
He said that cultural and historical change had<br />
led to a “dissolution” of morality in Catholicism.<br />
The sexual revolution in the 1960s had led to homosexuality<br />
and paedophilia in Catholic establishments,<br />
he claimed.<br />
The letter sparked fierce criticism from theologians<br />
who claim it is “deeply flawed”.<br />
Vatican expert Joshua McElwee said in the National<br />
Catholic Reporter: “It does not address structural<br />
issues that abetted abuse cover-up, or Benedict’s<br />
own contested 24-year role as head of the<br />
Vatican’s powerful doctrinal office.”<br />
Some allegations of child sex abuse by priests that<br />
have emerged date back to decades before the<br />
1960s, the decade that Pope Benedict claims sparked<br />
the abuse crisis.
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