Mark Weston
@markweston19
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Writer, researcher, immigrant. Author of The Saviour Fish: Life and Death on Africa's Greatest Lake - a Wanderlust and Daily Telegraph Book of the Year, 2022.
Ghana
Joined May 2009
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Pinned Tweet
"It's lovely, but it's not going to make you any money." A candid start to the day - from a friend who is reading The Saviour Fish.
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My wife Ebru is making Sudanese ful for dinner. We didn't have a Pepsi bottle to mash it with so the bottom of a coffee jar will have to do:
#Sudan
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Neither the UN nor a single "Friend of Sudan" country (including the EU, UK, US, Norway, Canada) has admitted they got it wrong by trusting Hemedti and Burhan when they said they wanted a democratic Sudan. Everyone in Sudan knew this was bullshit, but they were all ignored (1/x).
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The Sudanese government has been hijacked by warlords, but Western mediators are treating them as regular military leaders who want the best for their country.
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I give Sudan's Resistance Committees a shout-out in The Continent's Africans of The Year list:
#Sudan
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Why Sudan's resistance committees deserve the Nobel Peace Prize - my latest for
@thecontinent_
#Sudan
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Khartoum: a city where taxi drivers sometimes refuse to accept payment.
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I'm no longer surprised by the perseverance of Sudanese protesters, but whenever I'm wondering if their revolution has hit the buffers they do something astoundingly creative to quash my cynicism
#SudanCoup
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A Sudanese friend who evacuated Khartoum has been waiting at the Egyptian border for eight days. He says the Egyptians stopped collecting passports last Saturday and are no longer issuing visas. His wife got across last week, but men seem to be having a harder time getting visas.
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"From Bahri to Omdurman, from Darfur to Port Sudan, all the country is Sudan." Banner in today's march from Bahri to Omdurman:
#SudanCoup
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NISS agents were Bashir's torturers-in-chief. They've been given the option of joining the regular security forces (the janjaweed are regular these days) or retiring. NISS has been replaced by the General Intelligence Service, whose remit is limited to information-gathering.
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Lake Victoria is so huge (it's the size of Ireland) that it creates its own weather system. This evening it's opted for a thunderstorm, turning the sky first charcoal then pink.
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A young doctor earns $40 a month working full-time in a Khartoum hospital. To be able to feed his two kids he has to moonlight as a taxi driver. At the end of my ride this morning he refused the one-dollar fare we'd agreed on. 'Make it free,' he said, shrugging off my protests.
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Balloons bearing the names of protesters killed by Sudan's military junta, released today as the Bahri and Sudan marches met:
#SudanCoup
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The UN and the Friends of Sudan ploughed on with their Framework Agreement for a transition to democracy, heedless of multiple warnings from actual Sudanese people that neither Hemedti nor Burhan, nor their backers in the UAE and Egypt, would ever allow democracy to happen.
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Good to see Hemedti's gold smuggling company Al Junaid on the list of firms sanctioned by the US over the Sudan conflict. How about sanctioning the UAE companies that buy Sudan's gold?
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The head of the Janjaweed, which perpetrated the 2003 Darfur genocide and has been accused by the UN of ethnic cleansing in Darfur IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS, has been allowed to visit Kigali's genocide memorial museum. Sometimes it's very hard to have hope for Africa.
#Sudan
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Hearing that SAF is making rapid progress in Khartoum. Their jets flying over today were shot at by RSF anti-aircraft guns, but a journalist friend there thinks they might have control of the city by next week.
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"While the blame ultimately rests with the two generals, no autocrat in the region wanted a successful democratic Sudan." Good summary by
@_Will_Brown
:
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I have a short piece in this week's
@thecontinent_
on Sudan junta leader Burhan's invitation to Queen Elizabeth's funeral
#SudanCoup
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After being booted out of Tigray, the Ethiopian army is redeploying to the border with Sudan, where the Foreign Affairs Minister claims "a national threat is brewing":
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That Hemedti wants Volker Perthes back tells you all you need to know about the UN envoy, who has done a better job than any PR agency of boosting the warlord's brand:
#sudan
I fully support the UN work and initiatives in Sudan under the leadership of
@volkerperthes
and the UN secretary-general,
@antonioguterres
particularly at this challenging time when the people of Sudan are dealing with catastrophic situations.
We are grateful to and have full
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Seven months into Sudan's pointless conflict, half the country's population - 25 million people - need humanitarian assistance. Three million children have been displaced. Six million face acute food insecurity. And no leader or even government minister in the West gives a shit.
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Ramaphosa welcomes Hemedti. Looks like it's only genocide when Israel does it.
#Sudan
أجريت اليوم بمدينة بريتوريا مباحثات مثمرة مع فخامة رئيس جمهورية جنوب أفريقيا
@CyrilRamaphosa
تناولت التطورات التي يشهدها السودان في ظل الحرب الدائرة الآن.
قدمت شرحاً وافياً لفخامته حول أسباب اشتعال الحرب في البلاد والجهات التي تقف خلفها والتي تدعم استمرارها وحجم الدمار والتخريب
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Dead on schedule, and not worrying too much about stopping the Mayfair traffic, the London
#SudanCoup
protest is moving to the Saudi embassy.
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Instead of working to reduce the two warlords' power, which was critical to giving civilians the control over military forces that a true democracy needs, international partners strengthened it.
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Last photo from Sudan, as we're leaving for Britain tomorrow. Sudan has closed its borders, meaning it will be difficult to get out from now on and we're supposed to move to India in May (virus permitting). These are the last yards of the White Nile. It's been a blast.
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Funny how British people who live abroad are expatriates, while foreigners who live in Britain are immigrants.
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"Stop supporting janjaweed," they shout outside the UAE embassy in London. "Down down Mohammed bin Zayed". Fair shouts
#SudanCoup
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Quite a few pledges by the RSF - a genocidal militia led by a gold trafficking warlord - in this new agreement with Sudan's discredited political parties. Why anyone would take these pledges in good faith is beyond me.
#Sudan
🧵 English version of the agreement reached between RSF (Hemeti) and Taqaddum (Hamdok) in Addis Ababa.
#KeepEyesOnSudan
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Sudan's revolution is about to enter its fourth year. Tomorrow, the new military junta that wants to crush that revolution will get a taste of its popularity as, despite a three-week internet shutdown, hundreds of thousands take to the streets of Sudan to call for its downfall.
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In Khartoum, coffee is served by women, many of them from South Sudan, the Kordofans, Darfur or Ethiopia. But in the eastern city of Port Sudan, coffee-making is the work of men - Beja in brown waistcoats crouching by brick stoves, who serve their brew in dainty porcelain cups.
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This is the RSF - a militia that is carrying out ethnic cleansing in Darfur - trying to look like a state.
#Sudan
The RSF is working on the establishment of a ‘federal police force’
#Sudan
. The force is supposed to start operating in Khartoum soon. In RSF-controlled
#Darfur
states, hundreds of policemen have returned to their job.
#SudanNews
#SudanCrisis
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Chad, Mali, Sudan and now Burkina Faso have all experienced coups d'état in the past year. Mauritania, Senegal, Eritrea (ruled by a military dictator) and Niger (failed coup attempt last March) the only Sahelian belt countries unaffected.
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The Islamist Jibreel Ibrahim will head the committee set up to review the work of the Empowerment Removal Committee, responsible for recovering assets stolen by Sudan's former Islamist regime and his fellow coup plotters. Next they'll put Hemedti in charge of the 3 June inquiry.
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But even if Burhan and Hemedti hadn't fallen out and started the current conflict, they still wouldn't have allowed Sudan to become a democracy. They have too much at stake - too much blood on their hands and too much wealth that is dependent on the military-led status quo.
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They gave them legitimacy by bowing to them sycophantically in meetings they shouldn't have been invited to. They allowed them to get away with killing civilians who protested against them and sidelining or arresting those who were investigating their corruptly acquired wealth.
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Newly released Wajdi Saleh is in the thick of the protests, chanting that the people are stronger and there's no way back. Brave guy
#SudanCoup
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Have the "Friends of Sudan," who have spent the last two years legitimising the two mass murderers who are currently tearing apart the country, apologised yet?
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Good night for the UAE, supporter of Manchester City, the Janjaweed, Haftar and other warlords.
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In a better world, Brits, Americans, Germans and French who had chosen to live in Sudan would be considered no more worthy of evacuation from the country than an elderly Sudanese lady who sells tea on a Khartoum street.
#sudan
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But coming out with pointless condemnations of yet more atrocities helps nobody. It gives the impression of support for the revolution without being backed by actual support. A true Friend of Sudan would be more honest with Sudan's people.
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Sudanese-style fish (with fuul of course), served in the basement of a London supermarket, which also has a handy prayer room adjoining it at the bottom of the stairs so you can kill many birds with one stone.
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I hope the international negotiators in Sudan realise by now that they are being played by Burhan and Hemedti, who have no intention of ever handing power to a civilian government.
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Bahar Abugarda, Minister of Health under Omar al-Bashir, is harangued after turning up at a lecture about Sudan's revolution at the University of Khartoun. 'Why did you send your family abroad for medical treatment?' was one of the questions asked.
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Seeing Burhan's unpopularity yesterday might ordinarily increase the risk of another coup to unseat him. Hemedti's RSF is the bulwark against that for now, but the partnership between the two men is a marriage of convenience and Hemedti himself must be considering his options.
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My forthcoming book on Lake Victoria now has a rather beautiful cover, designed by
@Lewis_Broadway
and featuring a generous endorsement from
@simonallison
. The Saviour Fish comes out next April.
#Tanzania
#LakeVictoria
#BiodiversityCrisis
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This girl lost her dad today. His crime? Protesting peacefully against a military coup
#SudanCoup
⭕️ لجنة حي صالحة وسط: الآن تحرك جثمان الشهيد مصطفى من مشرحة مستشفى امدرمان نحو منزله بالصالحة هجيليجه مربع 10 ، نهيب كل الثوار التحرك الى منزل الشهيد والمشاركة في تشييع جثمانه الطاهر .
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They allowed Hemedti and Burhan to delay any action to reform the security sector and reduce its grip on the economy, and they kicked any effort to hold them to account for 3 June and other atrocities since 2019 (what happened to Nabeel Adeeb's committee?) into the long grass.
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To end the conflict in Sudan, Crisis Group recommends a compromise that would give Hemedti a leading role in a reformed military. This would a) reward him for starting the war and renewing his genocide in Darfur, and b) kick the can down the road until he starts another one:
Sudanese are paying intolerable price for the generals who have pushed
#Sudan
into all-out war. They should not however suffer from uneven diplomacy. All outside parties need to upgrade their diplomacy, which has failed to rise to urgency of the moment
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Dear
@Zain
, please explain how shutting the internet for 2 weeks in Sudan in a context of widespread human rights abuses by a military junta tallies with the "firm belief" in the right to communication and freedom of expression that you declare in your sustainability report:
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And for what? So they could say they'd made progress on an agreement - an agreement that it was obvious to everyone but them that the two generals and their Arab state backers would never adhere to if it was properly implemented.
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Now it should have become obvious even to the Friends of Sudan that Hemedti and Burhan have no intention of surrendering their power or wealth, yet still there is no ackowledgement of this. They talk of returning to the negotiating table, of returning to the transition process.
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Sudan's junta has set up a “joint deterrent force with special tasks” to address the violence in Darfur. It will include the army, the RSF (aka Janjaweed), former rebel combatants, and other security and intelligence forces. The fox is guarding the henhouse.
#SudanCoup
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I hope the Western diplomats on here are watching what's happening in Wad Madani and will for once do more than tweet their condemnation of the RSF's atrocities.
#Sudan
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RSF now claiming that it was escorting French embassy staff in their evacuation from Khartoum. If true, a European embassy trusting a genocidal militia rather than the national army or police sends a strange signal.
On the morning of 23 April 2023, the Rapid Support Forces were attacked by aircraft during the evacuation of French nationals from their embassy, passing through Bahri to Omdurman, which endangered the lives of French nationals by injuring one of them and the survival of the rest
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There's also a case for the US to label the RSF a foreign terrorist organisation. The US defines terrorism as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents." This is the RSF's job description.
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Sudan's coup raises important questions for advocates of transitional justice - the process where countries come to terms with systematic or large-scale rights violations through mechanisms like truth commissions, reparations and reforms that reduce the risk of future abuses (1/)
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Perthes really doesn't want his buddy Hemedti to have done anything wrong, especially anything genocidal. So he peddles Hemedti's line - which he used after the RSF massacred 200 protesters in Khartoum in 2019 - that it's men "in RSF uniform" who are perpetrating the atrocities.
In Geneina, there is an emerging pattern of targeted attacks against civilians on ethnic basis allegedly committed by Arab militias and some men in RSF uniform. If verified, these attacks could amount to crimes against humanity.
See my complete statement:
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According to the FT, the UK government appears to be targeting Sudanese refugees for deportation to Rwanda. The Home Office has declined to say why. Would be interesting to hear what the British embassy in Khartoum, which claims to support Sudanese protesters, thinks about this.
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Useful for everyone except the Sudanese people:
#SudanCoup
Useful meeting of Friends of
#Sudan
core group in Riyadh today. Full support for UN-facilitated 🇸🇩 consultation process on way forward to resolve political impasse and end the violence. Participated together with 🇸🇪 representative from MFA Stockholm
@IrinaSNyoni
.
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It's time to be frank - either the Friends of Sudan are serious about democracy or they admit that the military and its regional backers are more determined than the Friends and that Sudanese who want democracy will therefore have to fight for it by themselves.
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It's time for the US to impose sanctions on Sudan's military junta, argues Alex de Waal:
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Khartoum: a city where complete strangers, spotting you walking along the roadside, will stop and offer you a lift to wherever you are headed.
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"Rather than continue with the slow and frustrating process of dialogue with civilians, al-Burhan put his personal and factional interests first, holding out the false promise of decisive leadership. It’s a betrayal of Sudan." Damning from Alex de Waal:
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Wow. UNITAMS accuses the RSF of ethnically targeted violence against civilians in Darfur and of rape and looting in Khartoum. Major change of tack from a body that has for years turned a blind eye to the militia's atrocities.
#Sudan
UNITAMS welcomes the unilateral ceasefires by the Sudanese Armed Forces & Rapid Support Forces;
Stresses the need for both forces to maintain ceasefire;
Reminds that the world is watching & there will be accountability for crimes committed during wartime
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That Saudi didn't sign the Friends of Sudan statement denouncing the Sudan coup (how it or the UAE get to call themselves friends of Sudan is a mystery) suggests its Foreign Minister's condemnation of it in the presence of the US Secretary of State may not have been wholehearted.
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If you lead a coup and murder protesters, you are welcome in Britain. If you escape being murdered and seek refuge in Britain, you are deported to Rwanda.
#SudanCoup
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Sudan's neighbourhood resistance committees should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
I haven’t written since the revolution. Finally mustered the courage to write something for
@prospect_uk
.
I am deeply grateful to our resistance committees, who have remained beacons of light in the overwhelming darkness.
#KeepEyesOnSudan
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Depressing that even Crisis Group thinks Hemedti is a trustworthy actor. Recommending him for a leading role in a post-war Sudan isn't that different to suggesting Charles Taylor or Foday Sankoh for top positions in post-war Liberia and Sierra Leone. Hemedti just has better PR.
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A friend and her two young sons fled Khartoum for Medani several months ago because the fighting in Khartoum was traumatising the children. This morning they have had to flee again, to distant Gedaref, because the RSF militia is closing in on Medani.
#Sudan
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A friend in Tanzania had flu symptoms. He was prescribed drugs for malaria, typhoid and a UTI.
'You had all three diseases at the same time?' I asked him.
'In Tanzania you always have all three. Even if you fall off a bike they will say you have malaria, typhoid and a UTI.'
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Either you work towards a civilian government with no military involvement except in keeping borders secure (are the Friends' governments "civilian-led"?) or you accept that you have less power or interest in Sudan than UAE and Egypt and that democracy is therefore unattainable.
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Sudanese pro-democracy protest at the North Pole yesterday:
Even Sudanese from the North Pole joined in today. We’re deadass elite!
#Oct30March
#Sudan
#Sudanese
#SudanCoup
#Sudan_Coup
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Hamdok's position in the junta is surely untenable now it's started killing protesters again. His release from house arrest coincided with a pause in the killings, suggesting that was a condition for his agreeing to the deal. The junta has now abrogated that commitment
#SudanCoup
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Another thing about Crisis Group's recommendation to give Hemedti a leadership position in a post-war Sudan is that it totally ignores the demands of the protesters and resistance committees that have led the pro-democracy movement.
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"A British official had called him to say he could be evacuated with his two children only if he left his pregnant wife behind." How do these people sleep at night?
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So the international partners' talk of getting back to a "civilian-led" transition towards a "civilian-led" government - even now that the two men have shown their true colours beyond all doubt (surely now it's beyond all doubt?) - is absurd.
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Clear documentation of Sudan junta killings of unarmed protesters by
@hrw
. The international community has repeatedly condemned this violence, which has killed dozens and injured hundreds, but continues to do nothing at all to stop it:
#SudanCoup
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Dear Sudanese guys who blow kisses at women in the street, you're a pathetic embarrassment to an otherwise great country.
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A friend in Khartoum asked me to post this message on Twitter. Can anyone help please (for example, US government officials or diplomats or journalists)? Retweets would be very helpful too:
#Sudan
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Hamdok has resigned from a position of powerlessness. All the power is with Hemedti and Burhan, probably in that order
#SudanCoup
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Sudan warlord
@GebreilIbrahim1
regrets that the Sudanese people have to resort to foreign intervention rather than coming together for direct dialogue to solve the problems he and his fellow putschists, who have killed 63 civilians in Khartoum alone since their coup, have caused:
كما تأسف الحركة شديد الأسف لزهد السودانيين في جدوى الحوار المباشر بينهم و اضطرارهم إلى اللجوء إلى الأجنبي للجمع بينهم حول الطاولة.
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Nice of
@SudanTribune_EN
to act as Hemedti's mouthpiece. "Reaffirmed his dedication"!
Mohamed Hamdan Daglo "Hemetti," Commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), reaffirmed his dedication to halting the ongoing conflict in Sudan and forging a broad peace accord encompassing all armed groups, including those who declined to endorse the Juba Peace Agreement.
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Impressive to mobilise several million people to protest at the same time across a country with no internet.
#SudanCoup
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I didn't predict either Nigeria's effective response to ebola or its peaceful change of goverment. Very glad to be proved clueless.
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Sudan's Empowerment Removal Committee was set up by the transitional government to recover assets corruptly acquired by Omar al-Bashir's kleptocratic regime. Now Burhan, who led last week's coup, has formed a committee to recover those funds from the ERC, which he has disbanded.
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...and, because Sudan is the most hospitable country on the planet, zalabia on the house to finish.
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Today is the anniversary of Sudan's revolution, a demonstration of the power of non-violent resistance and the most inspiring experience of my life. Here's my piece on what it was like, named yesterday as one of the Mail & Guardian's best articles of 2019:
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Museveni hosts Janjaweed leader/ethnic cleanser Hemedti:
Today, I had the pleasure of visiting our sister country of Uganda and participating in a fruitful meeting with H.E. President
@KagutaMuseveni
. During the meeting, we discussed developments in Sudan and how to best address the hardships faced by our people. I briefed the
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Nearly all of those killed in Sudan's pro-democracy protests since Burhan and Hemedti's 25 October coup were shot in the head, neck, chest or abdomen:
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