SUDAN INSIGHT ALERT: Financial Times - Dreams of freedom are being crushed on the streets of Khartoum

5/6/19: Financial Times – Dreams of freedom are being crushed on the streets of Khartoum, by David Pilling

 FT’s Africa editor David Pilling calls for the world to start taking notice of events in Sudan, because it raises the fundamental questions:

 “What should people do when confronted by tyranny? In an age when democracy has few champions, can a pacific uprising ever topple a regime with guns?”

 Pilling notes how “the odds are stacked against [Sudanese protesters],” arguing that it is “a bad era…to be a democrat without a gun.”

 To emphasise this point, Pilling states that “The US has lost moral authority as a democratic champion,” and that a UN resolution to condemn Sudan’s military violence was blocked by China and Russia. In addition, the “real power brokers” in Sudan are said to be the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt – “regimes that have snuffed out democratic movements in their own countries and with no appetite to see them flourish in neighbouring states.”