Sudan protesters use social media to mobilise crowds

As the number of Sudanese protesters are swelling with each passing day, filling up the streets of several towns and cities, including the capital Khartoum, the anger on the ground refuses of subside with people using social media to keep the momentum going. 

Eight demonstrators are already dead and several dozen have been injured in police firing, according official statement by the government spokesperson.

For the past two days, the protestors have been vandalising several public properties, including the governing party's office, as part of a series of demonstrations against lack of basic services, mainly rising bread prices and rampant fuel shortages.

The Sudanese government declared a state of emergency and curfew, between 6:00 pm to 6:00 am on Wednesday in Atbara city, which is a five-hour long drive from the capital city of Khartoum.

A video appeared on Twitter that shows that demonstrators greet the Sudanese army. 

There are some claims about Sudanese secret service, the Mukhabarat, targeting the protestors.

People on the ground tweeted about shutting down of mobile internet in the country on Friday. 

NetBlocks.org also confirmed it found “detailed technical evidence of an extensive internet censorship regime implemented to suppress public demonstrations across the country,” by collecting data from 300,000 individuals who live in major populated cities in Sudan.

The government has made several attempts to shut down Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, together with messaging application Whatsapp.

President Omar al-Bashir has also come under heavy criticism for firing the country's head of the Communication and Information Technology Commision for responding late and not shutting down the internet services from the beginning of the protests. 

Some of the demonstrators chanted: “The people want the fall of the regime”- a slogan used in the “Arab Spring” protests that changed the power dynamics in most of the Middle East. 

The government's spokesperson Bishara Jumaa spokesperson said in an official statement that “peaceful demonstrations were derailed and transformed by infiltrators into subversive activity targeting public institutions and property, burning, destroying and burning some police headquarters.”

“Some political parties emerged in an attempt to exploit these conditions to shake security and stability in order to achieve their political agenda,” Jumaa said. He did not identify the parties, however.  

Leading Sudanese opposition figure Sadiq al-Mahdi returned to Sudan on Wednesday from nearly a year in self-imposed exile and called for a democratic transition in Sudan.

“The regime has failed and there is economic deterioration and erosion of the national currency’s value,” Mahdi, who was Sudan’s last democratically elected prime minister and now heads the Umma party, told thousands of supporters. 

The demonstrations on Wednesday and Thursday were among the biggest since crowds came out against cuts to state subsidies in 2013.