New Delhi, Delhi, India
Sudanâs military has overthrown the countryâs longtime president, Omar al-Bashir. Itâs a huge win for the hundreds of thousands of Sudanese protesters who have taken to the streets for months calling for his ouster.
Alaa Salah is a 22-year-old architecture student from Khartoum has been an iconic figure and symbol of these protests by leading women protestors from the front.
Clad in white, Alaa Salah can be seen poised above the crowds in Khartoum, where demonstrators gathered to demand the military hand over power to civilians.
The ouster on Thursday of Bashir, 75, followed months of protests against his rule.
the struggle continues... #thawra #Sudan pic.twitter.com/zJ91Xqsew5
â Alaa Salah (@iAlaaSalah) April 11, 2019
"I wanted to get on the car and speak to the people," Salah, a student at Sudan International University, said on Twitter.
"We need international support, for people to be aware of what's happening and to understand our demands."
She praised the role of Sudanese women, many of whom have taken to the streets in protest.
"You cannot have a revolution without women. You cannot have democracy without women," she tweeted. "We believed we could, so we did."
Calling herself "very proud to take part in this revolution," she said her life has been threatened since her picture and video went viral on social media.
"I will not bow down. My voice cannot be suppressed," she tweeted, adding that she would hold Bashir responsible "if anything happens to me."
Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague and faces an arrest warrant over allegations of genocide in Sudan's Darfur region during an insurgency that began in 2003 and led to the death of an estimated 300,000 people.
He denies the allegations.
(With inputs from Reuters)