Sudan’s pro-democracy leaders vowed Thursday to press their campaign of civil disobedience until the ruling military council is ousted and killers of protesters are brought to justice, following a crackdown this week that killed scores of people.
The pledge comes after new clashes brought the death toll in three days of the military crackdown to 108. On Wednesday, troops were seen pulling 40 bodies of victims, slain by Sudanese security forces, from the Nile River in Khartoum and taking them away.
The Sudan Doctors Committee, one of the protest groups, said it was not known where they were taken. The committee also said more than 500 have been wounded in the crackdown.
The Sudanese Professionals Association, an umbrella of union groups that has been behind months of rallies that forced the military to oust longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir in April, urged people to block main roads and bridges to “paralyze public life” across the country in retaliation for the military’s crackdown.
The crackdown began with a violent dispersal of the protest movement’s main sit-in camp, outside the military headquarters in the capital, Khartoum, on Monday.
“Our success depends on our full adherence to peaceful protests, no matter how hard the criminal militias seek to drag us into violence,” the association said in a Facebook statement on Thursday.