Africa, Headlines, Human Rights, Press Freedom

MEDIA-SOUTH SUDAN: Battle on Two Fronts

Skye Wheeler

JUBA, Oct 31 2008 (IPS) - A recent presentation at parliament by the South’s Finance Minister gave a few cursory details of how the South’s army managed to spend 99.6 percent of its budget by June. At the end of the public session, the South’s Parliamentary Affairs Minister Martin Elia told journalists not to write about the presentation for security reasons.

While no one could think of any legal reason for his position, all the journalists IPS talked to said they would not write about the report. With promised reforms to media laws still undone, it was not clear to anyone whether a journalist not conforming to the request could have problems.

There is also a strong desire not to betray the realities of the South to the North, says media expert Mach Michael. “You have to be a Southerner to understand. The struggle continues,” he said. “It is just the guns have fallen silent.”

Pressure on the media at least, also comes from further a field. In September, Sudan’s National Press Council (NPC) shut down two English-language dailies edited and owned by Southern Sudanese.

Official reasons given for the ban included that some of the papers’ journalists working in South Sudan were not registered by the council. But both editors said earlier warnings that the papers were too critical of Khartoum’s government reflected the NPC’s real reason for the move that took place against a general background of censorship and harassment.

A good deal for the press?

On most days in the month preceding the ban on his paper, editor and owner William Ezekiel had every copy of his The Sudan Tribune paper picked up from the printer by security agents in Khartoum that he believes works together with the NPC, costing him thousands of dollars in printing costs and lost advertising.

Editor Nhial Bol’s The Citizen was also shut down for a couple of weeks in September, prompting him to experiment with printing in Kampala for a few weeks. The NPC said Bol’s Darfurian managing editor had not been registered, a charge Bol denied, adding that the NPC was threatened by his senior staff being from the war-ravaged region. Last year the paper was also briefly shut down for an article that was deemed offensive to Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al Bashir.

The two editors from the South plug on, not knowing when Khartoum will crunch down on their papers again. There are no printing presses in the South and printing in eastern Africa is too expensive an alternative.

The 2005 deal between Khartoum’s ruling National Congress Party and the southern rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) ended more than two decades of conflict over religious and ideological differences.

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) pledged to share power – and oil wealth – between north and south but also contained a wider promise of democratisation for Sudan, including elections and greater freedom for the press.

The SPLM HAS accused Khartoum’s NCP – still the majority in Sudan’s parliament – of dragging its feet over reforms. “We need new press laws, new security laws and the human rights commission law to be passed before the elections for them to be free and fair,” the SPLM’s Secretary General Pagan Amum told IPS, referring to Sudan’s first free ballot in over 20 years set for 2009.

But louder roars of discontent have drowned out these complaints. Both sides have accused each other of failing to respect the accord. Full-on fighting between the two armies has erupted twice since 2005, worrying the governments throughout east Africa who benefit both economically and in security terms from a stable South.

Down south   An as-yet unpublished report on the state of the south’s media by a group of practitioners said that much of the region has no media at all. Other than the government radio there are only a few radio stations. Many gather around the few televisions in the capital to watch the single government TV channel. Three dailies dominate the press but are often very similar in content: financial pressures and low capacity mean much of the papers’ content is cut and pasted from the internet.

Without mass media even basic information has not filtered far into the rural South. “Many people don’t even know about the CPA. They know maybe that the war has ended. But they don’t know their rights,” a senior civil society member said.

Even the South’s most enthusiastic journalists have been stymied by a lack of training, electricity, access to internet and transport and many are not paid regularly because of cash shortages.

The press has the same infrastructure problems as all of the South’s businesses. A terrible road network makes transporting papers to many places by road difficult and expensive for the dry half the year and merely impossible in the rainy season muddiness that cuts off many of the South’s communities.

The extremely narrow economy – based on the drip-down of government oil cash – means advertising is still limited. Literacy, one UN report suggested, is probably at about 15 percent.

And few outside of the intellectual elite understand the rights of journalists either, Mach said.  Although there are no laws against photography, journalists snapping in Juba market places are liable to be picked up by plain clothes security men. Many report harassment by one or the other of the South’s different security branches, including government reporters. The situation is far worse Michael says, in rural areas where the army runs security.

“In the states things are still very authoritarian. In Juba there’s the international community, ministries, the UN and still these mistakes happen. You can imagine what it is like in the states.” he said.

Missing laws

A liberal policy on expression was immediately agreed by the Council of Ministers in the early days of the government Mach said: a good sign.

But this policy remains in the upper echelons of government and actual laws have still not been passed. “Without these laws, journalists are not properly protected,” said the Association for Media Development’s Advocacy Officer Mogga Richard, said.

“It’s hard because people do not know the rules, so they are scared to do anything new.” Press conferences are regularly attended, but there’s little of any kind of investigative activity.

There is a lack of clarity about what could happen to someone who stepped out of line: an activity Citizen editor Bol – six-foot-something tall with a big personality and strong sense of irony – is getting a reputation for.

Bol has been jailed twice this year and both times under orders from ministers that his paper has linked to corruption scandals.

Even under old rebel military law, Bol said, he should not have been thrown in jail on civil charges of defamation, but in the legislative confusion, it is entirely possible. “I would not be here if there was the new law,” he said while still in jail.

Corruption is widely recognised as a growing problem in the South. The South’s President Kiir warned recently that some big names would soon find themselves behind bars but many think this is unlikely given the careful and fragile balance of ethnic representatives in government. Top officials linked with corruption have generally been moved, not fired.

Several committees in parliament have been charged with investigating graft but none have produced a report yet, despite many months of promises. The Auditor General’s office is stuck in a rut after its leadership was fired and has not done a single audit except on itself. (Two top officials were then fired for corruption).

Also pending new legislation, the Anti-Corruption Commission has yet to investigate a single case.  As weak as the fourth estate still is, there is little else in the South to put up any kind of obstacle.