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DonateIn a return to old tactics, the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) in Sudan have resumed strict pre-publication censorship.
Committee to Protect Journalists
CPJ Blog
Press Freedom News and Views
Sudan
Four East African journalists who were forced to flee their countries tell about their experiences, difficulties, and hopes for the future. (3:43)
Read CPJ's report, "Journalists in exile: Crisis in East Africa," for more information about journalists forced to go into exile.
With the launch of CPJ's most recent exile report, I will have worked exactly three years for our Journalist Assistance program. More than 500 cases later, I have helped journalists who have gone into hiding or exile to escape threats; those in need of medicine and other support while in prison, and journalists injured after violent attacks. The most harrowing accounts of all, however, come from those crossing from Eritrea into Sudan. And things seem to be getting worse, not better.
Talking about genocide prevention in the shadow of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camps brings an intense and unique gravity to the discussions. The academic presentations cannot extract themselves from the looming presence of the barbed wires and grim towers surrounding the Nazis' most infamous death factory.
Press freedom in Sudan is rapidly deteriorating, with confiscation of newspapers by the security agency becoming a norm. The scope of violations committed against publications and journalists by the Sudanese National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) is widening by the day.
Sudanese authorities have a long history of closing newspapers and silencing journalists. But the government security agents who carry out official censorship have launched a new strategy this year that focuses on economic impoverishment--leaving newspapers more vulnerable than ever.
When The Juba Post's star reporter, Apollonia Mathia, told me that so-called "tong tong" rebels had attacked again near Gumba, in southern Sudan, I looked at her warily. "Let me get the camera I'll check it out," she said. Apollonia planned to hop on our rickety motorbike to cover a story about the infamous Ugandan rebels, the Lord's Resistance Army. Locals in the current capital of what will soon be South Sudan, Juba, call the Ugandan rebels "tong tong," which literally means "cut cut," because of their notoriously brutal machete attacks. It was getting late in the day, but I knew there was no point in trying to convince Apollonia out of a story.
On Thursday, I
participated in a panel discussion about media in the
Sudan's execution this week of nine men found guilty of involvement in the 2006 assassination of editor Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed, left, is seen by many there as an outrageous miscarriage of justice, spurred by a thirst on the part of President Omar al-Bashir's regime for settling scores with the rebellious region of Darfur.
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