Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday in this Chamber the Taoiseach expressed concern about gross human rights violations by the regime in Sudan. Many of these violations have been led and organised by rapid support forces drawn from the old Janjaweed militia who have engaged in beatings, rape, torture and killings. They have fired live ammunition in hospital wards. They have been responsible for the widespread dumping in the River Nile of the corpses of murdered people. They have been funded by the European Union to the tune of millions of euro to curb migration from Sudan to the European Union. Was there any discussion at the European Council meeting on the ending of these payments to such a murderous force? EU member states have supplied weaponry on a mass scale to the Saudi regime. Some of these weapons have ended up in the hands of the Sudanese armed forces and been used to gun down Sudanese protestors. Was there any discussion at the European Council meeting on the ending of arms sales by EU countries to the Saudi regime? Were decisions made at the meeting in that respect?

4 o’clock

I salute the masses of the Sudanese people whose uprising and revolution ended the regime of the hated dictator. However, as is so often the case in the first phase of a revolution, the dictator fell but state power remained in the hands of his associates - in this case, the army officers of the so-called transitional military council. When the transitional military council launched bloody attacks on the people at the start of June, the response was truly heroic. The repression was met by a two-day general strike, which featured powerful strikes by port workers, oil field workers and pilots among others; the building of barricades in Khartoum made of bricks and burning tires; the blocking of bridges; and the spread of this type of neighbourhood resistance nationwide. It has become increasingly clear that the real power in the land and the protector of democratic rights and freedoms is the masses of the Sudanese people, led by the urban working class. The strike committees in workplaces and the neighbourhood committees that organise the resistance on the barricades have the potential to provide the foundation of a new genuinely democratic and socialist government in that country. We support the organised self-defence of the Sudanese people, who can appeal to the ordinary rank-and-file soldiers to join the revolution, disarming the regime and brushing it aside. There must be the release of all political prisoners; one person, one vote; the return of all troops from Yemen; the scrapping of military and security budgets with the money being put into health, education and jobs; nationalisation under workers' control of all the companies and assets of the old regime; a free, democratic and socialist Sudan that recognises the self-determination of all oppressed minorities and ethnic groups; and the spreading of such a change to all neighbouring countries.

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