Sudan Journalists Protest Crack Down On Media By Government in Khartoum

Badru Mulumba
JUBA.

In a television studio the size of two trailer trucks, the Government of Southern Sudan's Information Minister Changson Chang talks like a man sensing a crisis on his hands.

In his midst, scores of journalists, apparently bleeding, have converged.

"I see every one with this," Changson, right palm over his lips, says to officials seated next to him in the studio, long before the television cameras are switched on.

"They are trying to close their mouths," says Victor Bullen Baba, the director of Southern Sudan Television.

"To demonstrate?" Changson asks, and then nods his head. "It's a very strong message."

"Your Excellency they are expressing their views over the National Press Council decisions in Khartoum," said Baba.

In the mid morning, sweltering heat in the centre of Juba, Southern Sudan's most progressive journalists, yesterday, converged to show their disgust, following a particularly bad phase of censorship.

This they did in the only way they could: a plaster over the mouth here, a plaster over the arms there, or anywhere else they could. Some had bruised cheeks. Others had bleeding lips. And some had bleeding eyes.

It was the first spontaneous media demonstration in the south against censorship since Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in January 2005, ended a 21 year north south civil war, and a powerful statement that when one journalist suffers all journalists should bleed. South Sudan is now led by Sudan's First Vice President Salva Kiir.

During the demonstration, journalists started converging at the Southern Sudan Television bearing a memo that had taken them a week and several meetings to put together.

"Despite the fact that Sudan Tribune has been reopened, and The Citizen has crossed the border to print from Uganda, this doesn't stop us," said David Dau, a journalist with the Sudan Radio Service.

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"Should the National Press Council continue with such actions, it would minimise the work of the press, not only in Southern Sudan, but in Sudan in general."

Dau must know. In early August, the National Press Council banned Dau's column in the Sudan Tribune, making him the first victim, in the south, of the censorship in Khartoum. In a letter, August 3, signed by the Complaint Committee Chairman of the National Publication and Press Council Abdalla Mohammed Ali al Arabad.

The Council chairman was incensed by Mr Dau's columns; in one column Mr Dau called for the investigation of the National Congress Party for the atrocities they committed, compensation of the Abyei Dinka for the displacement and destruction of property.

Mr Arabad also accused Mr Dau of inciting the south to secede, asking for a popular uprising against the NCP, and that his writing was not in 'conformity with' Islamic Press laws, according to the letter written in Arabic.

But some of Sudan's media have often proven unaware of what's probably the greatest moral lesson of the last century, best captured by the World War 1 Germany Naval Captain, Pastor Martin Niemoller. When the Nazis came for the communists, Niemoller wrote, he remained silent; he was not a communist. The Nazi's then went for the social democrats, then the trade unionists, then for the Jews. "When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out."

If they had learned that lesson, perhaps the newspapers that were suspended later would not have been.

When Dau's column was stopped, because of the way some journalists, here, often personalize competition, not many fellow journalists from outside his organization came out to speak for him.

At least one Reporter told of his editor stopping him from writing about the Press Council suspension of Mr Dau's column, and, another journalist even defended the ban as normal because the writer was not registered in Khartoum. By the end of the month, the censorship had claimed one newspaper: Sudan Tribune.

Sudan security officials August 28 seized, and shut down the Tribune, one of the leading English dailies, following a pattern of threats and seizures over months. The paper's print run was confiscated 17 times in August alone right after it had paid money and the printing was done.

In a letter, the Secretary General of the National Press Council, Hashim el-Jaz, Tuesday, issued what he called the 'final warning' to the newspaper, saying that failure to comply with the conditions, 'we'll shut down the newspaper' on September 1.

The Press Council claimed that the as Editor-in-Chief must be based in Khartoum - and not Juba, where it early this year opened an office.

The council also asked the newspaper to replace the old Editorial Board and submit a new list of names to the Press Council, forcing the paper to file a case in the Constitutional Court, seeking compensation and an end to harassment by the National Press Council.

Five days later, on September 1, the censorship claimed another newspaper: The Citizen, asking the Editor-in-Chief to name an editorial board and to name an acting Editor-in-Chief in case he still wants to publish in Khartoum.

The Press Council accused the newspaper of bleaching the law that requires that in the absence of the Editor in Chief, an acting editor be named within 24 hours, for at least three months, failing to name an editorial board, and failing to put ten copies of the newspaper to the Press Council.

The press council also claimed that the Managing Editor of The Citizen, Izzadine Abdul-Rassoul, was not qualified to hold a senior position. Izzadine is fairly critical of the National Congress Party regime. He also hails from Darfur. The decision of the press council has led to speculation over its real intentions in saying that he's not qualified.

The Sudan Tribune was reopened September 4, after it named an acting Editor-in-Chief to sit in Khartoum. But under the law, one can only act for a maximum of three months and a substantive editor-in-chief named to sit in Khartoum.

The Citizen now prints two times a week in one of the East African countries. But that means it can not be distributed in the north. For Dau and Izzadine, it's a no win decision.

Southern Sudanese David Dau's column remains banned so long as Sudan Tribune prints in Khartoum.

Darfuri Izzadine remains jobless so long as his newspaper runs away from Khartoum.

"The journalists of the south should stand up for press freedom," Wol Deng, a member of the Southern Sudan Legislative Assembly, told the demonstrators.

The oppression of the freedom of speech, he added, is not acceptable, according to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

But a demonstration in Juba against censorship in Khartoum has as much impact as a demonstration in Nairobi against censorship in Kampala. First, the authorities in charge of the censorship sit thousands of kilometers away, in Khartoum.

Second, Sudan is literally two countries in one, each setting its rules, and as of now, the part of the country that oppresses the media, and is out of Changson's power, is also the only one with a printing press.

According to the Changson, whose party paper has also been censored, in Khartoum, an SPLM-NCP Partnership committee is working on various issues of the CPA, including media freedom.

But talk is nearly all that the southern Sudan government can offer right now.

"We have to levels of government," Changson said, resignedly.

But the demo has at least one upside: The media, for now, is, at least on the face of it, united behind Martin Niemoller's lesson.

"We, media houses in southern Sudan are committed to the course of our profession in Journalism and we consider an injury to one as an injury to all," read the memo the journalists handed over to the Information Minister through one of the journalism clubs here, Association for Inter-Media.

"We therefore stand together to live and to struggle for a free, fair and independent media not only in southern Sudan but together with the rest of the world for a free and fair and independent media in the Whole world."

In that respect the journalists demo was important not so much for what it would achieve in Khartoum, but for how it has at least brought journalists together, at least, for now.

"It implies a silent demo," one journalist says, holding the cross patch glued to her cheek. "We are sending a message to the Press Council."

"This is the hand I use for writing - I write with the left hand," Nhial Majuk, a journalist with the Southern Sudan Radio, says of the cross patch on his arm. "Now, it has been disabled."

At least he feels Izzadine's and Dau's pain.

"I recommend your protest, which is signaled by the cross on your cheeks, and on your palms, especially my friend Paul [Batali]," Changson said, singling out a journalist who had glued up his entire lips and face.

"Today he doesn't want to smile because he's seriously injured," Changson said. "We recognize your concern."

(The Nation)