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Hello and welcome to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me

Alex Last bringing you more first-hand accounts of events that shaped our world and

today we're going back to 1964 and the first time civilian protesters brought

down a military regime in Sudan in what became known as the October Revolution, a moment that

still reverberate in Khartoum to the the The core was for the restoration of democracy. I got the realization that you know change

happened. Work for it and it happens.

Our story begins in October 1964 on the rather grand campus of the University of

Khartoum in the heart of the Sudanese capital. At the time Sudan had been under military rule for six years.

Opposition was growing and the university was a hotbed of political activism and dissent.

There were communists, Islamists, social democrats and supporters of mainstream political parties. Professor Abdelai Ibrahim is a Sudanese historian at the University of Missouri, but back in 1964 he was a student a young communist and a

prominent member of Khartoum University's Students Union.

The Students Union of Khachtoon University,

was the launching path for activities against the regime consistently and relentlessly.

And on the 21st of October hundreds of students gathered for the

latest in a series of provocative public debates.

E sensibly they were there to discuss a growing crisis in the south of Sudan, but in reality these

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