2011-01-31 Student in Sudan protests killed by police

As WL Central reported yesterday, protesters in Sudan were beaten by riot police as they tried to leave their universities to demonstrate. Today the facebook page for the January 30 demonstration contains a red script proclaiming a martyr. "Al-Gorashy was a martyr for us. And you are our martyr now, Mohammed Abdulrahman", it says, in reference to a student who died this morning in Omdurman hospital after being beaten by the police yesterday.

Al Jazeera reports"Medical sources confirmed to us that the student died yesterday from his injuries inflicted by security forces," said Yasir Arman, the top official in the north of south Sudan's main party, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM). Arman condemned the use of force and said the students were trying to hold peaceful demonstrations.

Today's report from Al Jazeera says that at least six universities in different parts of Khartoum and Omdurman, and in El-Obeid, about 600km west of the capital were surrounded by hundreds of heavily armed police, preventing students from leaving the grounds. At the medical faculty of Khartoum University police attacked with batons, arresting 64 people and wounding many and later surrounded the compound with more than 20 police trucks.

On Monday, journalists said security forces prevented the opposition Ajras al-Huriya and the independent al-Sahafa newspapers from being distributed after they wrote about the protests.

"Security came to the printing press and stopped the paper going out," said Fayez al-Silaik, deputy editor of Ajras al- Huriya, adding his paper was targeted because it had a front page article on the protests.

Dozens of students including two sons of opposition politician Mubarak al-Fadil were arrested and many remain detained, activists and opposition officials said on Monday.