Angry protestors in Southern Sudan have torched offices of Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party, the NCP, following the arrest of southern leaders in Khartoum.

Key figures in southern Sudan’s dominant political party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), were detained after they refused to cancel a pro-reform rally banned by President Omar al-Bashir.

Pagan Amum, the SPLM’s national secretary general, Yassir Arman, the deputy secretary general in North Sudan, and junior minister in the interior, Abbas Gumma, were held as they arrived at the parliament building in Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city, on Monday.

Associate Editor of Africa Confidential Gill Lusk told Radio Netherlands Worldwide that the angry response by people in the south was unsurprising.

Listen to the Newsline interview with Gill Lusk

“The SPLM is supposed to be a partner with the NCP [formerly the National Islamic Front] as a result of the comprehensive peace agreement that was signed in 2005. The SPLM is a very junior partner that doesn’t actually have any power, and that’s indicated by the fact that a junior minister of the interior has been arrested.”

The Sudanese government had made Monday a public holiday, the final day voters could register ahead of elections due in April 2010, the first nationwide elections in 24 years.

Pro-reform demonstrators

Police had announced that any demonstrations would be considered illegal but hundreds of protestors turned out to call for reforms ahead and to push for an independence referendum for south Sudan.

According to Ms Lusk, President Al-Bashir’s National Congress Party has no desire to see such a referendum.

“The NCP took power nearly 20 years and it doesn’t want the comprehensive peace agreement. It wants to hold on to power both in the north and nationally and it doesn’t want to lose the south to independence. The peace agreement has a clause allowing a referendum so that southerners can vote to secede from Sudan if they wish to and most people expect them to want to do that.”

Holding on to power

The semi-autonomous South has been under the control of the SPLM since the peace deal was signed in 2005 after a 22 year civil which saw 1.5 million people killed.

Ms Lusk says that the peace deal stated there should be freedom of speech and demonstration, but that the NCP is unwilling to allow such freedoms.

“The regime has been resisting this very solidly because if there were free and fair elections they would lose power.”

All three of the arrested SPLM politicians have now been released. Mr Arman has said that he was beaten while in police custody.

Photo: EPA/KHALED EL-FIQI