By IPS Correspondents
KHARTOUM, Sep 2 1996 (IPS)

At least two people were killed and seven, including three policemen, seriously injured in bread riots that rocked Sudan’s capital and other towns on Sunday and Monday.

In Khartoum, a female university student was shot dead by security forces and students burned to death a bakery owner who refused to bake bread. In various parts of the city, demonstrators — old and young, men and women — burnt tyres, old clothes and newspapers in protest against a bread shortage here.

The governor of Khartoum state, Badr Edden Taha, said Monday on state radio that demonstrators had looted state property and damaged several cars on Sunday. One farmers’ bank in the city centre reported that its 20 minibuses had been destroyed and spare parts looted.

Shops have been closed since Sunday and transport restricted as bus operators pulled their vehicles off the roads, some voluntarily — to avoid attack –, others at the behest of the security forces.

Similar demonstrations were reported in the cities of Port Sudan in the east, Wad Madani, in the centre, and Ataber Town in the north.

A riot police spokesman Monday complained to journalists that teargas, sticks and rifles were in short supply and the police ill- equipped to cope with the more than 400,000 demonstrators, especially if the protests continued.

The government, which is said to be importing wheat from Arab states and negotiating with bakers to control skyrocketing prices, assured the nation that there would be sufficient bread this week.

A statement issued Monday by the Interior Ministry urged citizens to join committees purportedly comprising government officials, members of the Workers Federation, students unions and bakery owners to study the reasons behind the bread shortages and fix new prices, particularly in the capital.

The statement said the situation was “under control” and advised the injured to report to hospitals in Khartoum for treatment, assuring them that they would not be arrested. However, it also accused the leaders of banned opposition parties of fuelling the crisis and vowed to arrest those behind the demonstrations.

“It has never happened in the history of this country and throughout long struggles for political changes that a citizen is burnt alive,” the statement noted, slamming the burning of the baker as an evil act that should be condemned by religious people.

In a counter-statement, the students’ unions of Khartoum’s three main universities, Khartoum, El Nilein and the Sudan University of Science and Technology denied all charges of looting and said the riots’ organising committees had merely distributed to the poor 700 sacks of sorghum and ten 50-kg bags of sugar found in the Finance Ministry’s compound.

The students claimed that government has arrested more than 700 people and alleged that they had themselves detained 60 riot policemen. The government said the officers had merely been wounded and were undergoing treatment.

Many students, male street children and some government officials who joined in the demonstrations were taken by their comrades to private clinics for treatment.

Hashim Badr Sulieman, a demonstrator who was Monday shot in the head, refused to be taken to any state-owned hospital, telling other protesters on a Khartoum street that he would not sell out to the ruling National Islamic Front (NIF).

An elderly man on Makk Nimer street in the centre of the capital defied the police to kill him. “Please shoot me, I am ready to die in your hands,” he said. “If you come here to kill us, do it now, we are here looking for death so that (head of state Gen. Omar) el Beshir and (speaker of parliament Hassan) Al Turabi might rule our grave yards.”

Three girls carried a poster demanding the return of democracy and power to the people while another placard called for the respect of human rights including the right to eat bread. Other demonstrators insulted Al Turabi, who heads the NIF, and called for the restoration of multiparty democracy.

Despite the government’s claims that the riots had died down and its warning that anyone in the streets after 5 p.m. would be arrested, demonstrations continued in the late afternoon in a small village 10 km from the capital.

It was still unclear why bread is in short supply and has not been seen for four days, except in a few hotels and restaurants in the capital. Unconfirmed reports attribute the problem to government’s failure to import enough wheat and two days of water shortages which resulted in power cuts that prevented flour mills from operating.

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