To the chanting of ‘Down, down, Al-Burhan’, over 100 people from Leeds’ Sudanese community rallied on Saturday 13th November in support of the mass protests taking place the same day in Sudan.
Iain Dalton, Leeds Socialist Party
The protest condemned the military coup led by Al-Burhan, right hand man of the former dictator, Al-Bashir, whose thirty year rule was overthrown in 2018 by mass struggles.
The protesters welcomed the support of a Leeds Labour councillor, Abigail Marshall Katung, to the protest. However, she asked protesters to put their faith in British MPs persuading the military that they should go back on their ‘illegal’ coup, as well as encouraging protesters to keep ‘peace and reconciliation’ as their goal.
I spoke on behalf of the Socialist Party at the demo, pointing out there can be no reconciliation with the tops of the military who carried out the coup and were ordering the killing of protestors in Sudan as our protest was taking place.
To overthrow the coup leaders requires a deepening of the current resistance to the coup, including rebuilding and linking up the neighbourhood defence committees and others, such as those of workers striking against the military regime, as well as an appeal to rank and file soldiers, and replace the coup leaders by a revolutionary government of workers and the poor.
After I spoke the organisers thanked the Socialist Party for our ongoing support of the protests, and many on the protest took copies of our leaflet outlining the lessons of the 2018-19 movement that brought down Al-Bashir and a programme to take the struggle forward today.