Anti-government protesters returned to the streets of Khartoum and staged demonstrations in hospitals and universities overnight and on Tuesday in defiance of sweeping new emergency powers announced by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

Under the new powers, imposed by presidential decree and announced by Bashir on Monday night, people arrested for participating in unlicensed demonstrations and public gatherings would face 10 years in prison with special courts established to prosecute the protesters.

But protest organisers, opposition parties and activists on social media immediately called on their supporters to defy the new laws, and hundreds of people responded by rallying in Khartoum late on Monday, calling for Bashir to step down.

On Tuesday, doctors and students organised sit-ins at dozens of hospitals and universities in Khartoum and elsewhere around the country, drawing what activists described as a “brutal response” by security forces in some locations.

Campuses raided

Nagla Atta, an opposition activist, said that protests had taken place at several universities in the capital, including Ahfad, Medical Science and Technology and Sudan International.

She told Middle East Eye that police and security forces had fired tear gas inside the universities for a third consecutive day.

“Using the power of the emergency laws, the security forces and police cracked down aggressively on the students, firing tear gas, and raiding the campuses,” she said.

“The security forces brutally attacked the universities, beating the students and abusing the female students.”

Siham Hassan, an opposition member of parliament, called on the minister of health in Khartoum state to investigate who had allowed security forces to enter the campus of the Medical Science and Technology University.

Human rights activists say that the laws announced by Bashir on Monday in response to two months of widespread protests against his 30-year rule are unprecedented since Sudan’s independence in 1956 and amount to a ban on any form of resistance to the government.