Sudanese security forces intensify media crackdown
The increasing pressure, violence and prosecution faced by journalists at the hands of security forces represent a major threat to the future of press freedom in the country.
The Qatari media network Al Jazeera announced in a Jan. 16 statement that the Sudanese Ministry of Culture and Information had withdrawn the broadcast license of its channel Al Jazeera Live and revoked the accreditations of two of its journalists in Sudan for their allegedly “unprofessional” coverage of the country’s affairs. The ministry later stated, in a statement carried by the state news agency SUNA, that the decision didn’t affect other satellite channels of the group, and that it came after several warnings.
A few days earlier, on Jan. 12, the Sudanese Journalists Network (SJN), a local press freedom group, condemned the arrest of two photographers — Mohamed Khidir and Magdi Abdalah — who work with the Chinese news agency Xinhua. Both were forcibly taken to a military zone in Omdurman, the twin city of Khartoum, handcuffed in an isolated place and subjected to hours of interrogation after having their phones confiscated, the group stated.
Barely two weeks before, on Dec. 30, a group of soldiers had violently stormed the offices of Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadath TV channels in Khartoum, fired tear gas, assaulted those present and confiscated part of their equipment, according to videos of the incident and details released by both channels. The Sudanese authorities also stormed the office of Al-Sharq TV and interrupted a live broadcast of their journalist Sali Osman, footage showed.
The three incidents reveal the increasing pressure, violence and prosecution faced by the media and journalists in Sudan at the hands of security forces following the Oct. 25 coup, including threats, physical violence, arrests, summons, raids and looting, and destruction of equipment, groups such as the SJN warn. The crackdown, which takes place especially on days of protest against the military government and which seems to be intensifying in recent weeks, represents a serious setback to the hard-won progress made during the now disrupted transition on press freedom and threatens to turn Sudan into a media blackspot.
