SUDANESE journalists have formed the country's first independent professional union for decades, in what campaigners said was an important step towards re-establishing freedoms after a military coup. "The victory is to regain our syndicate after more than 30 years in order to defend the freedom and professionalism of the press," said one journalist Waleed Alnour, who waited hours in the sun to cast his vote in an election for the union's leadership on Sunday. The union has 1,164 members, 659 of whom took part in Sunday's vote. Shadow unions that sprang up in opposition to autocrat Omar al-Bashir, who packed…