S. Sudan security confiscate copies of independent newspaper
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December 11, 2013 (JUBA) - Members of the South Sudan security
services raided the printing press of the country’s leading
independent English newspaper, confiscating all copies of the
publications that were due for distribution, The Citizen’s editor said
Wednesday.
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A vendor sells newspapers in South Sudanese capital Juba (Photo: Al-Jazeera)
Editor in Chief, Nhial Bol said that "fully and well-armed" government
agents entered the newspapers premises at dawn, "terrorising" the
newspaper’s journalists and technicians before seizing Wednesday’s
edition.
Bol attributed the confiscation to The Citizen’s coverage of Bol’s
arrest and detention by South Sudan’s security services on Tuesday.
The leading journalist, who has been detained by the authorities on
numerous occasions, was released after several hours "behind doors",
following political intervention from higher level authorities.
In recent months critics have accused the government of adopting the
same repressive attitudes that led to the South fighting decades of
civil war against various Khartoum regimes until a 2005 peace deal
allowed for independence in July 2011.
In the two and a half years since independence, human rights
organisations, civil society groups, journalists and individuals who
hold critical views about the conduct of senior government officials,
have complained of sustained harassment, torture, arbitrary actions
and arrest and detention.
Government agents are alleged to act on the directives and orders of
some senior government officials in order to silence their political
critics and to scare the media from reporting on sensitive issues,
often leading to self-censorship.
In November, South Sudan’s new minister of information and
broadcasting, Michael Makuei Lueth, ordered all journalists to
register and acquire new government identification cards.
The move has been rejected as unconstitutional by South Sudan’s
independent media outlets and has been criticised by press freedom
groups.
Alfred Taban, the Editor in Chief of the Juba Monitor, who led a
delegation of South Sudanese journalists to a meeting with the
information minister last month, said they not could reach any
understanding because the order was illegal and unconstitutional.
Several media practitioners and civil society organisations have
expressed dissatisfaction with the new directives and warned the
government against tightening freedoms and suppressing individual
rights.
The confiscation of newspapers when they covering events critical of
senior government officials, specifically the president and security
agents, is tactic also practiced by the Sudanese government.
Copies of the independent Al Masir Arabic newspaper were confiscated
on 7 December, allegedly for publishing a detailed report of the press
conference convened by the senior SPLM leaders to criticise the
leadership of president Salva Kiir Mayardit on 6 December.
In 2011, the editor-in-chief of the English version of Al Masir was
arrested and the paper was subsequently suspended infinitely on the
grounds that it published an opinion article critical of the marriage
of president Salva Kiir’s daughter to an Ethiopian.
"The current developing events within the leadership of the SPLM are
interesting to say the least, and it requires the government to allow
the media to adequately inform the general public without fear of
reprisals. Doing the opposite compromises not only the principle cause
and objective of the liberation struggle but constitutional commitment
of the government itself to promoting and strengthening democratic
institutions", Dominic Aguer Wol, who is from South Sudan’s Northern
Bahr el Ghazal state, told Sudan Tribune on Wednesday.
Wol said it would be "backtracking" if the government, which came to
exist as result of fighting a repressive system uses the same
repressive procedures in order to crackdown on newspapers and media
outlets as well as to harm them financially though confiscating their
issues; leading to their closure.
"I call on the government in my capacity as a citizen of this country,
to stop its anti-media campaign and instead use the rule of law in its
engagement with the media and journalists," said Wol.
Newspaper staff says they are contemplating holding a demonstration in
the capital, Juba, to protest over the seizure of their newspapers and
have submitted a memorandum to the parliament to present to the
government.
No date has so far been agreed as some media practitioners argue that
they should first convene a meeting first with officials at the
ministry of information, security services, police and military.
(ST)
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