By Alexander Dziadosz
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Hundreds of Sudanese joined anti-government demonstrations in Khartoum on Saturday, as protests against planned cuts to fuel subsidies and other state spending flared for a second week despite a Security (SECURITY.8)crackdown.
Sudan's police force ordered its officers to put an end to the demonstrations "immediately", state media said, after the protests spread throughout the capital a day earlier expanding beyond the core of student activists initially involved.
Angered by a raft of planned austerity measures meant to tackle the country's $2.4 billion budget deficit, activists have tried to use discontent over a worsening economic crisis to trigger an "Arab Spring"-style uprising against the government of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
Security forces have used teargas and batons to break up the demonstrations, which have taken place in several neighbourhoods but have never garnered more than a few hundred people.
On Saturday, the smell of teargas hung in the air and smoke rose from burning tyres amid a heavy security presence in the Al-Daim neighbourhood, which was also the site of some of the larger protests a day earlier.
A Reuters correspondent saw around 300 to 400 demonstrators, but it was difficult to estimate the total number of protesters as they were scattered in small groups on different streets.
Protests followed the same pattern in the Sajjana neighbourhood, where small groups of demonstrators moved through side streets, blocked roads, burned tyres and chanted "freedom, freedom", and "the people want to overthrow the regime".
In the central Khartoum Three area, around 200 demonstrators threw rocks at police, who fired teargas to break them up.
CRACKDOWN
In a sign that the authorities plan to intensify their crackdown, the state-linked Sudanese Media Centre said in a text message sent to mobile phones that police had been ordered to "immediately end the demonstrations and incidents of unrest according to the law."
The police have only rarely commented on the protests, which have gone almost entirely unreported in the local media. On Friday, the police said they had contained "limited" demonstrations that did not exceed 150 people.
Earlier on Saturday, authorities arrested Saata Ahmed al-Hajj, general secretary of the Sudanese Commission for Defence of Freedoms and Rights, the head of the group said.
Activists reported that protests broke out in at least four other neighbourhoods of Khartoum on Saturday, but there was no independent confirmation of that.
Sudan avoided the wave of unrest that toppled strongmen in neighbouring Egypt and Libya last year, but tough spending cuts announced this week unleashed a spate of demonstrations.
The measures are aimed at dealing with an economic crisis caused largely by the secession of South Sudan a year ago. The new nation took about three-quarters of the country's oil output, which was previously Sudan's main source of revenues.
That left Sudan with a budget deficit of about $2.4 billion, a weakening currency and high inflation for food and other goods, many of which are imported.
The two countries were supposed to work out a deal whereby the landlocked South would pay Sudan fees to export crude via pipelines and other facilities on its territory, but they have so far failed to reach an agreement.
South Sudan shut down its crude output in January after Khartoum started taking some oil. African Union-brokered talks in Addis Ababa have yet to produce a deal.
(Writing by Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
