Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

A popular revolution in Sudan has been ongoing for several months to overthrow the dictatorship of al-Bashir. He fell in April, but a military junta is viciously repressing a popular movement of ordinary people demanding democracy. Just in the past week we have seen a massacre in which up to 100 people were killed, bringing the overall death toll to many hundreds more. It is worth saying that while the official line of countries such as the US is to support a transition to civilian rule, key allies of the United States, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, are all essentially backing the regime in its vicious persecution of this popular movement for democracy.

2 o’clock

What is the European Union doing about this? I point in particular to the Khartoum Process and the need for us to call for the Union to suspend that. Essentially, the Khartoum regime behind this vicious repression and persecution is being given money by the EU to control migration out of that country, leading in particular to incredible suffering and persecution for Eritreans and Ethiopians. They are treated in an unbelievably vicious way by this regime. Will the Taoiseach indicate what he is doing in talking to our EU colleagues and if he would support action by sanction, such as suspending the Khartoum Process?

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