Via Reports Without Borders -
Reporters Without Borders deplores the censorship and harassment to which Sudan’s privately-owned media have been subjected since the start of the year. Arrests, summonses, threats and outright bans on certain news items - the campaign waged by the government against the independent press is reducing the space for free expression even more.
“It should be an honour for Sudan to let the many Khartoum-based daily newspapers operate freely and express a wide range of views,” the press freedom organisation said. “But no, the authorities have instead chosen to send zealous censors to the printeries, people without authority, legitimacy or clear ideas. This censorship is not only illegal, it is also saddening.”
The government decided to reestablish censorship for the privately-owned media on 6 February after the media referred on several occasions the support it was providing for a Chadian rebel offensive against the Chadian capital of N’Djamena. An unidentified official with the National Security Service told Reuters on 6 March that prior censorship had been reintroduced, confirming the impression already reached by the Khartoum-based press after a month of harassment by the political police.
According to journalists quoted by Reuters, NSS officials began on 6 February to descend on the offices of newspapers every evening to check the content of the next day’s issue before it went to press. On 10 February, for example, the police suppressed an article by Haider al-Mikashfy in the Arabic-language daily Al-Sahafa about a recent speech by NSS chief Salah Gosh accusing some journalists of working for “foreign embassies” and warning that “investigations” were under way.
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