Organize Committees of Action! For a General Strike and Popular Insurrection to bring down the Regime! For a Workers and Poor Peasants Government!
Statement of the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency, 28 December 2018, www.thecommunists.net
1. The Sudanese Revolution has begun. Since 19 December, thousands of people are marching every day. Starting in Atbara – the heart of the country’s railway network and a traditional stronghold of the trade unions – the mass protests soon spread to at least 15 towns and cities, including the capital city Khartoum. Protesters have torched the ruling National Congress Party's offices in several cities. The doctors have already launched an indefinite strike and call the people to join them. The journalists have also gone on strike. The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) sends its enthusiastic greetings to the heroic Sudanese people! We say: Victory to the Popular Insurrection! Forward to the second wave of the Arab Revolution!
2. These spontaneous mass protests were triggered by the tripling in the price of bread as well as by the high inflation (68% in September, one of the world’s highest rates!). There are shortages in bread and fuel in several cities, including Khartoum. However, the protests soon became political with people calling for the fall of the regime and the overthrow of Omar al-Bashir. It has become popular to quote a famous speech of the autocratic ruler Omar al-Bashir. When he took power in 1989 he said while addressing a rally in Khartoum: “Anyone who betrays the nation does not deserve the honour of the living.” Today the Sudanese people say: “It is now Bashir who does not deserve the honour of serving as the leader of Sudan!”
3. The regime of al-Bashir desperately tries to suppress the popular insurrection by any means necessary. It promised to withdraw the price rises for bread. When this didn’t stop the protests, the regime turned to brutal repression. Until now, at least 37 protesters have been reportedly shot dead during protests according to Amnesty International. At the same time al-Bashir denounces the protests as instigated by “foreign agents, traitors, outlaws, and destructive persons”. The regime also detained 14 leaders of an opposition coalition, among them Farouk Abu Issa, the 85-year-old head of the National Consensus Forces.
4. With daily mass protests and violent clashes with the repression apparatus, a revolutionary situation has opened in Sudan. This is also vindicated by first cracks inside the regime. Abdarouf Grnas, health minister in Northern State's provincial administration, resigned. There has been a livestream broadcast which seemed to show the commander of the government Rapid Support Forces paramilitary, Mohammed Hamdan Dagolo, criticising Bashir. The Popular Congress Party, a bourgeois Islamist party which is part of Bashir's government, condemned the killings of protesters in demonstrations and called for a probe.
5. The government of Omar al-Bashir is a reactionary capitalist authoritarian regime. In late October Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Muataz Musa announced a 15-month economic austerity programme in line with dictates of the International Monetary Fund, one of the world’s leading imperialist financial institutions. The Sudanese regime has supported the Saudi-led aggression against Yemen and sent thousands of soldiers to participate in this reactionary invasion. It has reconciled with the Egypt military dictatorship of General Sisi. Likewise, Bashir visited Damascus to meet the Syrian dictator Assad on 16 December – a highly symbolic meeting of two tyrants which are despised by their people. In reaction, Sudanese opposition figures condemned Bashir's meeting with Assad and warned that the visit constitutes a “new alliance between the regional dictators”. Likewise, Sudanese demonstrators marched with green-white-black flags of the Syrian Revolution, expressing their solidarity with the ongoing liberation struggle. Bashir is also looking for rapprochement with the imperialist Great Powers. After years of tensions the regime has sought to normalise its relations with US imperialism since Washington last year lifted US sanctions on Khartoum. At the same time, Bashir strives for closer relations with Russian imperialism, as he travelled to Moscow in July to meet President Vladimir Putin.
6. The RCIT says that the crucial task of the hour is that workers, students, doctors, and poor peasants organize themselves in committees of action at work places, neighbourhoods, universities and villages. Such committees need to discuss and decide on the next steps of struggle and on the demands of the movement. They should elect delegates which should meet for a national congress. The movement should follow the call of the doctors and launch a nation-wide indefinite general strike. It should appeal to the soldiers and police not to shot at the people but rather to turn their weapons around against the generals. Furthermore, it is urgent to create self-defence committees in order to fight back against the brutal repression forces.
7. Such a nation-wide general strike and regular mass demonstration should result in a popular insurrection and the overthrow of the regime of Omar al-Bashir. The RCIT calls the Sudanese working people to create a workers and poor peasants government based on popular committees of action. Such a government should abandon any opportunist collaboration with the imperialist Great Powers like the U.S. or Russia. Such a popular government would also break with Assad, the butcher of Syrian people, with Egypt’s military dictatorship of General Sisi and with the Saudi monarchy led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which is responsible for the death of tens of thousands of Yemeni civilians as well as of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. It would rather support the popular liberation struggles in Syria, in Tunisia, in Jordan, in Iran, in Yemen and other countries and work towards spreading the revolution to the Arab world and to Africa.
8. A workers and poor peasants government would expropriate the rich and the multinational corporations like the China National Petroleum Corporation and others. It would take control over the countries’ resources like oil, gold and copper and get rid of the imperialist sponger from China. It would stop any other imperialist power like the US, Canada and the EU to re-enter and dominate its national economy. Therefore a workers and poor peasants government would nationalize the core sectors of the economy and control the prices of the popular consumer goods, jointly with popular committees. It would also implement full and equal rights for all national and ethnic minorities and would reach out for reconciliation with the peoples in South Sudan.
9. The RCIT urges activists to unite in a revolutionary party instead of relying to bourgeois opposition forces. Such a party would advocate a socialist program of liberation and would fight hand in hand with the workers and oppressed in other countries. Make no mistake: the fate of the Sudanese Revolution will be decided by organized forces with a political plan. It will be either the reactionary regime, or the bourgeois opposition forces or a revolutionary party. But without a plan, without a program, without a party of activists, the Sudanese workers and peasants will be robbed of their future! Without a party leading the insurrectional people to the creation of a workers and poor peasants government, the revolution will be suppressed or hijacked by pro-imperialist traitors!
10. The Sudanese Revolution is part of a global process of capitalist crisis and popular liberation struggles. First and foremost, it is part of the Arab Revolution which began in 2011. This revolutionary process of popular struggles succeeded in brining down Ben Ali, Gaddafi and Mubarak. It is still ongoing and it is directed against tyrants like Assad, General Sisi and Mohammed bin Salman as well as against corrupted neoliberal governments like those in Tunisia, Lebanon and Jordan. It is also related to the popular resistance against the reactionary regime in Iran. And, furthermore, the Sudanese Revolution is part of a global process of mass struggles against the governments of the rich and against all dictatorships. The mass protests in France, in Hungary, in Taiwan, in DR Congo, in Nicaragua – they are all products of the structural crisis of world capitalism. It is the responsibility of all revolutionary activists to unite on the basis of a joint program and to work towards the creation of a revolutionary world party. Join the RCIT in tackling this great task!
* Build committees of action at work places, neighbourhoods, universities and villages! Elect delegates for a national congress!
* Create self-defence committees!
* Organize a general strike! Victory to the popular insurrection!
* For a workers and poor peasants government!
* Forward to the second wave of the Arab Revolution! Long live the socialist world revolution!
* For a revolutionary party as part of a revolutionary world party!
International Secretariat of the RCIT