Gedaref’s Resistance Committees warned security agencies operating under Sudan’s SAF-controlled authorities on Sunday against using violence or arrests to suppress demonstrations over worsening living conditions, threatening an escalation if protesters are attacked.
The warning was directed at the security apparatus in Gedaref, an eastern state firmly controlled by the Sudanese Armed Forces and authorities aligned with army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan’s administration.
Although the committees’ statement did not name Burhan personally, the security structures they addressed operate in territory administered by the SAF-backed authorities. Burhan visited Gedaref earlier this month, meeting the state government and its security committee before inspecting the SAF’s 2nd Infantry Division.
The committees warned those security agencies against treating demonstrations over soaring prices as a security threat or using violence and prosecutions against participants.
They said any attempt to repress the protests could lead to an escalation, including directing future marches toward what they described as the authorities’ “strongholds.”
The statement followed demonstrations in Gedaref’s Al-Tadamon neighbourhood earlier on Sunday, where residents took to the streets over sharp increases in food prices, the collapse of purchasing power and deteriorating public services.
The Resistance Committees said the worsening economic situation, depreciation of the Sudanese pound and continuing effects of the war had pushed families into increasingly difficult conditions.
They described peaceful protest as a legitimate response to those pressures and urged demonstrators not to damage public or private property.
At the same time, the committees cautioned security forces against violence, arrests or attempts to insert disruptive elements into demonstrations to create a pretext for intervention.
The warning adds a new dimension to the demonstrations reported earlier in Gedaref, shifting attention from the initial cost-of-living protests to the possibility of confrontation between demonstrators and security forces loyal to the SAF-controlled administration.
Gedaref forms part of the broad eastern region controlled by the SAF, while Burhan remains commander-in-chief of the army and head of the Sovereignty Council.
The committees’ intervention therefore amounts to a direct warning to the security establishment administering Gedaref under the SAF-controlled authorities: allow the protests to remain peaceful or risk an escalation of the street movement.
