Military Junta Pressures Sudan’s Prime Minister To Support Coup

Sudan’s Prime Minister, Abdalla Hamdok, has been detained in an unknown location after a military junta tried to seize power from the transitional government on Monday, Oct. 25.

A statement by the country’s Ministry of Culture and Information posted on Facebook said that the joint military forces had initially placed Prime Minister Hamdok alongside four other officials under house arrest and pressured him to release a statement supporting the ongoing coup.

When he refused to “endorse the coup,” Hamdok was then moved to “an unknown location,” the ministry said.

The ministry said Hamdok called on the Sudanese people to resist the coup attempt peacefully. It also added that internet connections had been cut and that the military had closed bridges.

But the military was yet to react.

Hamdok’s arrest comes barely a month after his government said they had thwarted a coup attempt by loyalists of the deposed Military leader, Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

al-Bashir was overthrown in 2019 after a widespread protest that broke into two factions, one supporting a civilian government and the other, al-Bashir’s military rule.

A caretaker government dubbed the Transitional Sovereignty Council was created, involving the civilian and military leaders. But recents events showed the relationship of the leaders have strained overtime, taunting the possibility of the country’s return to democracy.

Until the coup, Hamdok was expected to take over leadership from the army chief of staff in November.

On Monday, Jeffrey Feltman, the United States Ambassador to Sudan, said the military takeover put the country at risk of losing the US assistance.

“The United States is deeply alarmed at reports of a military takeover of the transitional government.”

“This would contravene the Constitutional Declaration and the democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people and is utterly unacceptable,” Feltman said in a statement.