SUDAN’S democracy movement boycotted UN-brokered talks with the military that began today, saying they were farcical when the junta continued to kill protesters daily.

Medics said a five-year-old girl was the latest victim of the army’s savage crackdown, run down by a police car chasing protesters on Tuesday.

The United Nations, African Union and Intergovernmental Authority in Development started talks involving army chiefs and some civilian politicians to agree a “transition to democracy,” eight months after General Abdel-Fattah Burhan seized power and three years into the revolution that forced out long-term dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019.

Gen Burhan claimed he was “fully committed to work with everybody to end the transitional period as soon as possible with fair and transparent elections,” but the Forces for the Declaration of Freedom and Change, an umbrella group of democracy organisations, said his stance was a sham since he had not released protesters from prison and continued to forcibly crush demonstrations which have been held in the capital, Khartoum, daily since the end of May, when the junta theoretically lifted a state of emergency.

The Sudanese Communist Party said the army hoped to get a stamp of international approval for unfair elections which would echo the rigged elections of 2010 under the Bashir regime. 

The whole purpose of the military seizure of power last autumn was to “block the uprising” and prevent revolutionary forces from achieving the “complete overthrow of the system,” it charged, saying the army intended on restoring the previous regime “in a new dress.”

The “transitional military council” and its Rapid Reaction Forces bore full responsibility for the “treacherous massacres” of protesters and should be put on trial for “genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity” at The Hague.

But the communists saluted the courage of demonstrators who continued to stage mass protests in the face of lethal violence.

“The persistence of the Sudanese people despite the massacres, their determination to complete the revolution, has thwarted plans to change the balance of forces and the awakened people will continue the uprising, clear out the remnants of the old regime and overthrow the military council and its allies,” the party declared.