All broadcaster’s work permits cancelled as military official warns protesters they are ‘a danger to the revolution’

Sudan has shut down the Khartoum bureau of the satellite news channel al-Jazeera as the country’s military government warned that a sit-in in the capital that helped bring down the former ruler Omar al-Bashir had “become a threat to the revolution”.

The threat against the sit-in comes as civilian forces and the military remain divided over how much power soldiers should have in a transitional government. The protesters demand “limited military representation” on the council but the ruling generals refuse to relinquish power.

It remains unclear whether the military will use recent clashes at the sit-in as an excuse to clear the demonstrations. However, protesters have threatened to launch a civil disobedience campaign over the ongoing deadlock.

In a statement, al-Jazeera said authorities had shut down its Khartoum bureau and banned its journalists from reporting. “The network sees this as an attack on media freedom, professional journalism, and the basic tenets of the right for people to know and understand the reality of what is happening in Sudan,” al-Jazeera said in a statement early on Friday.

There was no official acknowledgment of the closure from Sudan’s government. The Qatar-funded satellite network has long drawn the ire of Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the four nations now locked in a nearly two-year boycott of Doha over a political dispute. They accuse its Arabic-language services of stirring dissent and backing Islamists, whom the nations largely see as a threat to their own governments.

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Al-Jazeera has long maintained that its network abides by “established global standards of professionalism”. Its English-language service rivals the BBC for its scope.

“Al-Jazeera is committed to the truth and providing a venue for the multiple sides of any issue, story, or event and will not be intimidated by the Sudanese authorities,” the network said.

Islamists backed Bashir in the 1989 coup that brought him to power. The military announced the end of Bashir’s 30-year rule in Sudan in April after weeks of sit-ins and protests ground the country to a halt.

On Thursday the Sudanese committee of doctors said security forces had killed a 20-year-old man near the sit-in. A day earlier, a gunfight between security forces erupted near the sit-in, killing a female street vendor by mistake. The military said a drunken soldier had opened fire on Wednesday, killing the woman and wounding two others, including a soldier.

Maj Gen Othman Hamed of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces said on Thursday the sit-in had attracted prostitutes and hashish sellers. He also said demonstrators had thrown stones at soldiers.

Hamed said: “[The sit-in] has become a hub for all kind of criminal acts and has become an unsafe place and a threat to the revolution and the revolutionaries, and is a threat to the national security of the state. Therefore we at the Rapid Support Forces, in coordination with other security forces, are responsible to restore the safety of the citizens and to carry out legal procedures to stop these violations and this behaviour.”

He did not elaborate on what that would mean for peaceful demonstrators.

The Sudanese foreign ministry issued an alert to all foreign embassies as well as international organisations operating in Sudan asking their staff to avoid the sit-in premises in Khartoum and all protest sites across the country “for the sake of their own safety and security”.

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The Rapid Support Forces has its roots in Sudan’s Janjaweed militias, which have been accused of genocide in the Darfur region. In 2003 and 2004, those militias torched villages, killing and raping civilians. Their rampage killed 300,000 people and forcibly displaced 2.7 million.

Both the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces refused earlier orders from Bashir to clear out the sit-in. At the end of the Arab spring uprisings in 2011, governments such as Bahrain and Egypt used force to clear similar sit-ins.