On March 8th riot police used force to break up a demonstration by women activists in Omdurman, beating and arresting many. This severity shows the government's determination to stifle and suppress protest and opposition, to prevent the possible escalation of a popular uprising following the examples of Egypt and Tunisia. This particular protest was intended to mark International Women's Day and (ironically, given the police response) to campaign against violence against women. Protesters were also drawing attention to the case of a Sudanese woman raped by members of the security forces in mid-February. She had been detained because of her involvement in a youth group called Girifna, which has been calling for and participating in protests.

The following day riot police violently broke up another protest, in central Khartoum, organised by youth groups and the National Consensus Forces, a loose opposition coalition. The protest was intended to be peaceful, to show solidarity with the people of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. However, beforehand the chairman of the National Consensus Forces, Farouk Abu Issa, said that the coalition was calling for the Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, to step down and that the Sudanese people would continue fighting in the way that people had in Egypt and Tunisia. For its part, the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) warned that the protest would be illegal, accusing the organisers of wanting to spread chaos. In the event, as soon as protesters started to chant slogans, security forces moved in. Meanwhile, sporadic protests continue elsewhere. In late February several hundred protesters reportedly took to the streets in Kassala after a civilian driver was killed by the local anti-smuggling police, and on March 10th several hundred graduates protested about unemployment in El Fula, an oil town in South Kordofan.

So far the only concession that the government has made to temper its uncompromising response to protests was in mid-February when Mr Bashir announced that he would not seek another presidential term after his current one ends in 2015. Otherwise the NCP has sought to represent the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia as reflections of popular Arab nationalist or even anti-Zionist sentiment. For example, in early March one senior NCP official, Gutbi al-Mahdi, claimed that the uprisings in the Arab world were a prelude to the liberation of Jerusalem from Israeli control. However, in reality Mr Bashir (who has been president for nearly 22 years) presides over an autocratic regime that is unwilling to share or cede power except when forced to, as in Southern Sudan under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.