Sudanese journalists at a press conference in Khartoum in this picture dated 2012. Credit: Albert González Farran - UNAMID

By Zeinab Mohammed Salih
KHARTOUM, Nov 2 2018 (IPS)

The day before Amnesty International released a statement calling on the government of Sudan to end harassment, intimidation and censorship of journalists following the arrests of at least 15 journalists since the beginning of the year, the head of the National Intelligence Security Services (NISS) Salah Goush accused Sudanese journalists, who recently met with western diplomats, of being spies.

Goush made the statement before parliament where he signed the code of conduct for journalists.

“They were called and interrogated to let them know that this [meeting with Western diplomats] is a project of spying,” said Goush to Sudan’s parliamentarians on Thursday Nov. 1. He then announced that the NISS was dropping all complaints against the journalists.

But Amnesty International said in its statement issued today, Nov. 2, that “the Sudanese government have this year been unrelenting in their quest to silence independent media by arresting and harassing journalists and censoring both print and broadcast media.”

“This just shows that Sudanese officials have not changed their ways- they still accuse journalists and activists of being spies and other trumped up accusations,” Jehanne Henry, a researcher on Sudan and South Sudan at Human Rights Watch, told IPS about Goush’s comments to parliament.

On Tuesday, a Reuters stringer in Khartoum and two other local journalists were questioned by the state security prosecutor about their earlier meetings with European Union diplomats and the United States’ ambassador to Sudan.

At the time they were told that they might face charges when the investigation is completed. Prior to Tuesday, five other journalists were also interrogated for meeting the same diplomats and the NISS stated that two more journalists were to be questioned on the same matter.

“What the NISS is doing to us is a form of extortion and it’s a terror act to stop freedom of the press. Journalists have the right to meet diplomats, government officials and opposition and anyone else and they can talk to about freedom of speech or anything else. Journalists are not spies,” Bahram Abdolmonim, one of the three journalists interrogated by the NISS on Tuesday, told IPS. He added “journalism is a message”.

Prior to Abdolmonim’s questioning three female and two male journalists were summoned to the NISS prosecutor’s office and where questioned for meeting with western diplomats and discussing freedom of speech.

These are not the only incidents of clampdown against journalists. On Oct. 16 five journalists were arrested in front of the Sudanese parliament for protesting against the barring of one of their colleagues from parliament.

“Since the beginning of 2018 the government of Sudan, through its security machinery, has been unrelenting in its crackdown on press freedom by attacking journalists and media organisations,” said Sarah Jackson, Amnesty international Deputy Director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes.

Amnesty International also said that there was an increase in print censorship and that editors receive daily calls from NISS agents to question them about their editorial content. The editors have to then justify their storylines. NISS agents also show up at printing presses and either order editors to drop certain stories or confiscate entire print runs.

“Between May and October, the Al Jareeda newspaper was confiscated at least 13 times, Al Tayar was confiscated five times and Al Sayha four times. A host of other newspapers including Masadir, Al Ray Al Aam, Akhirlahza, Akhbar Al Watan, Al Midan, Al Garar and Al Mustuglia were each confiscated once or twice,” the statement said.

Broadcast media have also been subjected to censorship. Earlier last month, NISS suspended a talk show on Sudania24 TV after it hosted Mohamed Hamdan, the leader of the Rapid Support Forces, formerly the Janjaweed troops, who are accused of committing atrocities in Darfur.

Across the country reporting is tightly restricted. Conflict zones like Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan states, are especially difficult to report from.

“The Sudanese authorities must stop this shameful assault on freedom of expression and let journalists do their jobs in peace. Journalism is not a crime,” said Jackson.

Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Sudan 174th out of 180 countries on its 2018 World Press Freedom Index, charging that the NISS “hounds journalists and censors the print media.”

Journalists in Sudan are often arrested and taken to court where they face complaints that range from lying to defamation.

Amnesty International called on the Sudanese government to revise the Press and Printed Materials Act of 2009.

“We work in fear in here, when I write something I’m not sure if I will end up going to jail or be interrogated by the NISS,” one journalist who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of their safety told IPS.

Activists claim that more than one hundred people have been killed and thousands injured during demonstrations in Sudan following the removal of fuel subsidies.

Protests have been raging in Khartoum, Maddani, the second city 200 km south of the capital, Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast and various other locations since the government lifted the subsidies Monday.

Palls of black smoke are now commonplace above the city skylines. Protesters have targeted petrol stations, police stations and checkpoints. Roads have been blocked with burning vehicles, including the road to Khartoum airport. Government officials have condemned the protests as “premeditated sabotage”.

As tensions have risen, foreign embassies and companies have been put on alert, with many closing non-essential offices and cultural organisations, while their workers have been advised to stay home.

The U.S. Embassy in Khartoum has appealed for calm. In a statement it said: “We call on all sides not to resort to force and to respect civil liberties and the right to peaceful assembly,” and regretted “reports of serious injuries and attacks on property during demonstrations which turned violent”.

In the Khartoum suburb of Omdurman, the security forces have shot into the crowds from armoured vehicles and helicopters have been flying over.  Victims of the violence have been killed by gunshot wounds to the head and chest.

Meanwhile, there are reports that elements of the Sudan Armed Forces are refusing to carry out orders from President Omar al-Bashir to control the situation on the streets.

Some protesters have targeted offices of the NCP ruling party, while others have gathered outside companies belonging to senior NCP members, such as the Steam soda factory. In many cases the police and agents of the National Intelligence Security Services (NISS) have tried to break up the demonstrations using extreme force.

Activists denounced that opposition party leaders were arrested before the fuel subsidies were lifted, in an attempt to prevent them from organising protests. Since then thousands of demonstrators have been taken into custody by the police and NISS.

However, the protesters remain defiant. Hafiz Ismail, an economist and commentator, told IPS: “The protesters will make the government change its policies – policies which will kill the people slowly.”

Commenting on government claims that the lifting of subsidies would help revitalise the Sudanese economy, he said: “They are lying and disrespecting the Sudanese people. Besides these measures won’t affect the rich but will only harm the poor.”

Hoyida Mohamed, 24, from Omdurman, told IPS she protested through the night, to fight the fuel price hikes and call for the government to resign. “The new policies will make our lives, which are already hard, impossible. Now we don’t have a chance to go to the university or get treatment when we get sick. We want this government out. Our lives have become very hard under this regime.”

Rishan Oshi, an activist who has participated in the demonstrations from the start, told IPS she was protesting against the government’s “disrespect for the Sudanese people. They want to fill their pockets from our wage packets

“The price increases are incredibly unjust. The people who are protesting are ordinary people and don’t belong to any political parties. I considered it like a revolution of the downtrodden and the hungry.”

The majority of the population in Sudan is poor.

Meanwhile, Internet services have been shut down in what seemed like an official attempt to stifle coverage of the protests. The Committee to Protect Journalist (CPJ) has appealed for an end to the block. “There is no justification for any government to cut off the Internet’s vital flow of information, which journalists and citizens alike rely upon,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Programme Coordinator Sherif Mansour.

The government has taken a hand in the way the protests have been reported. The Al-Ayam, Al-Qarar and Al-Youm al-Tali newspapers purportedly changed reports on the demonstrations following pressure from the Sudanese security forces. The Sudanese Journalists Network called for a strike, starting Thursday.

Fuel prices rose by more than 90 percent since the subsidies were lifted. And the annual inflation rate, which previously stood at 50 percent, is expected to climb to 100 percent.

This is the second time fuel subsidies have been cut since South Sudan became an independent nation in 2011, resulting in the loss of 75 percent of Sudan’s oil reserves.

Some economists have proposed alternatives to price increases to make good the shortfall, including cutting state workers’ salaries, fighting corruption, and reinvesting in agriculture.

Ismail said the government should enter into dialogue with opposition parties in order to address the country’s economic difficulties.

He said the government should seek political reconciliation, and argued that the removal of subsidies is “ineffective…These are short-sighted policies. It’s like treating cancer with Panadol (the painkiller paracetamol).”

The demonstrations are expected to continue over the next few days.

More than 200 of Sudan’s journalists are now unemployed after the government forced the closure of a number of newspapers in the country amid increasing press censorship. Credit: Zeinab Mohammed Salih/IPS

By Zeinab Mohammed Salih
KHARTOUM, Sep 15 2012 (IPS)

In Sudan’s newspaper district in Khartoum East, dozens of people sit beneath the trees sipping tea or reading newspapers. Most are journalists who once worked for the 10 newspapers that were either forced closed by the country’s security services or because of economic constraints that resulted after the government raised printing taxes in an attempt to prevent the media from reporting on anti-government demonstrations. 

Mohamed Ahmed, a former journalist for the Ajrass Elhuriya newspaper, which was closed in July 2011, is one of them.

“I have been sitting under the trees for a year and a half because the government closed my newspaper and other newspapers, that consider me to be opposed to the government, are afraid to hire me.”

The Sudanese Network of Journalists, a union for reporters, estimates that about 200 journalists are currently unemployed by the closures, which, it says, is the highest unemployment rate the profession has seen. The crackdown against the press began more than a year ago, soon after Sudan and South Sudan separated in July 2011.

More than 10 journalists were reportedly arrested and tortured by the police before and during nationwide anti-government demonstrations in June after the implementation of a government austerity plan that scrapped fuel and commodity subsidies.

In addition, security services have been accused of preventing 15 reporters from publishing stories on the demonstrations.

On Sep. 9, the general court in Khartoum north upheld the closure of a local newspaper, the Rai Elshab, and fined it for breaching the “duties of the press” and for “starting sectarian strife” after it published a story about rebel forces fighting the government in the country’s volatile western region of Dafur.

The war between the rebel forces in Dafur and the Sudanese government has raged since 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Army and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) began attacking government, accusing it of oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs. Since 2010, the warring factions have been in peace talks. However, fighting has continued in the region, with the most recent incident occurring on Sep. 6, which resulted in the death of 10 government soldiers.

The country’s National Intelligence Security Services (NISS) had closed the Rai Elshab newspaper in January, and owners had gone to court in an attempt to have the publication reopened. However, the judge ruled that the paper would not be allowed to publish again without NISS approval.

Ashraf Abdul-Aziz, the head of the political department at Rai Elshab, told IPS: “The NISS complained against us in a court and closed our newspaper because we published a story about JEM, which has been fighting against the government in Darfur. That the NISS has the right to allow us to publish or not is a very strange situation.”

The Sudanese Network of Journalists told IPS that in the coming weeks the organisation would lay a complaint against the Sudanese government with the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. According to one of the organisation’s leaders, Khalid Ahmed, the complaint will be made once all national and regional mechanisms to put pressure on the government for a free and fair media had been completed.

In July reporters protested against the censorship at Sudan’s Human Rights Commission to no avail.

Khalid Ahmed said that the network’s last memorandum to the Human Rights Commission in Sudan had been submitted on Jul. 4 and called for the cessation of censorship and the release of journalists in police custody.

“They didn’t reply to our memorandum as we’d expected, but we will continue on our mission to complain to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva to set the media here free,” he said.

Faisal Mahmed Salih, the former chief editor of the now-closed Eladwaa newspaper, and the head of Teebba Press Center, told IPS that the censorship had negatively affected the media’s role in disseminating information.

“Due to censorship, readers don’t buy newspapers because all of them are the same. People only buy one newspaper or two now.”

Political analyst Hafiz Mohamed told IPS that the crackdown against the press would have a negative effect upon democracy and any possible political reform.

“Freedom of expression is a basic part of the democratic process, included with other freedoms such as freedom of assembly and association. If the government forbids journalists and the media from doing their jobs, there will be no democracy in Sudan,” he said.

He added that the government’s current censorship “shows that the government is afraid of the freedoms of the press.”

However, Rabei Abdallatee, consultant to the Information and Communication Minster, told IPS that censorship had been imposed on the media because there were “public and special circumstances in the country.”

He said that the censorship would only end if the circumstances changed. “Our country has special circumstances, because we are in a war with rebel groups and the media has to be careful,” Abdallatee said.

He said that the newspapers closed by the NISS, which are yet to be charged, “published negative articles, and threatened our national security” and were being investigated.

Osman Shinger, the chief editor of Eljareeda newspaper, told IPS that his publication had been to court 15 times during the last two months because of an arrest warrant against him. Shinger was charged after the publication of an opinion article criticising the governor of Sudan’s Al Jazirah state.

“I think that all the Sudanese problems are relevant to freedom of expression and access to information,” Shinger said.

“We tried to talk to the Centre of Media and Information, but it is seen as an NGO that favours the government. They didn’t reply to our phone calls and they didn’t allow to us to enter their building.”

Meanwhile, some journalists who were arrested and subsequently released now face ostracism from other publications practising self-censorship.

Mohamed Alasbst, the former managing editor of the Al-Ahram daily newspaper, spent two months in prison because he aided the now-deported Egyptian journalist, Shymaa Adil, who was covering Sudan’s nationwide protests for the Egyptian Elwatin newspaper. She spent two weeks in prison. He told IPS that because of his stint in prison, newspapers will not hire him for fear of being targeted by the government.

Alasbst added that his own newspaper fired him after he was released from prison.

“They expelled me from my job and the other newspapers also don’t want me to work with them, because I was in prison and they are afraid for the government. They fear if they hired someone like me who is considered to oppose the government, the government might fight them or close them down.”

The difficult situation has resulted in some choosing to quit the profession altogether.

Mohamed Ahmed told IPS that he has decided to leave Sudan to find work in one of the Gulf states.

“I was just a professional in my career and the government didn’t accept the professionalism, they want all the journalists to be in with the government or not to be journalists at all.”