November 05, 2010 (KHARTOUM) – The press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RWP) has decried the recent crackdown by Sudanese security authorities on activists and journalists from Darfur, just as fighting in the troubled western region tumbles towards a higher incidence.
The past week saw the Sudanese authorities clamping down on Darfur activists in the capital Khartoum. Agents of the state’s security apparatus, the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS), on 30 October raided the office of the Human Rights and Democracy Network, rounding up 13 Darfur activists including a journalist working with Holland based Radio Dabanga.
Radio Dabanga released a statement saying that its arrested journalist Abdelrahman Adam is charged by the Attorney General on several counts, including “crimes against the state.”
On November 04, NISS agents raided the offices of the daily newspaper Al-Sahafah and arrested its journalist Jaafar Subki Ibrahim.
The Africa head of RWP Ambroise Pierre on November 05 told Voice of America (VOA) that both outlets were targeted for reporting on Darfur.
“The situation in Sudan right now is that there is a repression on a couple of key issues: the next referendum, Darfur, the fact that the president is being prosecuted by an international court in The Hague,” Pierre said.
He went on to express his organization’s worry for Sudanese journalists, saying that the current environment would make it impossible for the media to operate freely during the referendum.
“Particularly when a referendum is taking place like this, the population needs to be informed,” he said. “You cannot be a citizen if you are not informed before. The repression of freedom of the press ahead of the referendum is making it impossible for the Sudanese population to act as citizens” Pierre told VOA.
Sudan is due to hold a referendum in January 2011 on whether its southern semi-autonomous region should gain full independence from the Muslim North. The politically sensitive vote is likely to see Africa’s largest country split in two.
The crackdown on Darfur activists happens as the region witnessed a spike in fighting between government forces and the rebel group Justice and Equality Movement. Last week clashes between the two sides claimed a large number of causalities.
Darfur region sprang from oblivion in 2003 when rebels belonging mostly to African ethnic groups took up arms against the central government in Khartoum, accusing it of neglecting the region in terms of development and wealth-sharing.
An abusive counterinsurgency by Khartoum and its allied Arab militias gave rise to one of the worst humanitarian situations in modern history, where as many as 300.000 people dies according to UN estimates.
Sudan has recently ceased direct pre-publication censorship on Arabic newspapers, a system in which NISS agents visited offices of newspapers at night to purge their draft copies of contents deemed unacceptable.
However, editors of newspapers were forced to sign a so-called “code of journalistic honor”, which obliges them to practice self-censorship and refrain from publishing contents “likely to be censored under normal circumstances.”
(ST)