Sudanese weekly heavily censored

The Sudanese weekly Al-Maidan was not issued on February 10, 2009, because of official censorship, Abdul Qadir Muhammad, a reporter for the newspaper told CPJ in an e-mail. Muhammad wrote that the Sudanese security staff responsible for censorship omitted six articles and the banner headline on the front page and at least 10 articles in rest of the 11 pages of the newspaper.

“The leading political commentary, a piece discussing our opinion, on the conflict in Darfur and its tragic consequences and our perception of a possible model for its resolution [was deleted],” a statement from the newspaper said.

Al-Maidan is a weekly for the Sudanese Communist Party.

According to Muhammad, Al-Maidan has been a target of government censorship since November 2007. “Now it has reached a point of almost restricting all the articles without a specific criteria or reason,” he wrote.

Journalists in Sudan have consistently complained about the sweeping censorship that the government has been imposing on newspapers. Several journalists have told CPJ that security officers visit newspapers on the eve of publishing and omit articles they deem detrimental to the regime.