Sudan a dangerous place for journalists who cross state’s ‘red lines'

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/10/-sp-sudan-media-censorship-omar-al-bashir

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Seven-year-old Hafiz Habani could not understand why his mother was missing. When a security officer tried to confiscate her photo, he fought back. “Give me my mother’s picture or I will throw this stone at you!” he shouted. The picture was returned.

Hafiz’s mother, Amal, is a journalist in Sudan who has been arrested seven times, most recently after mass anti-government protests last year. Blindfolded and held in solitary confinement, she was wracked with fear for her two sons. For Sudan is a dangerous place to work in the media.

The authorities have recently suspended publication of some newspapers, confiscated printed editions, suspended individual journalists, blocked websites and harassed and threatened journalists with prosecution for criticising the government, according to Human Rights Watch.

Financial punishment

Last year, in an apparent breakthrough, the government promised to end the practice whereby security officials were physically present on all editorial floors, reading, censoring and removing articles from newspapers before they went to print. But instead they have increasingly resorted to seizing and destroying bundles of papers after they come off the presses, inflicting an additional financial punishment on publishers.

Habani, 40, formerly a daily columnist, was among hundreds of people rounded up and detained after the demonstrations that shook president Omar al-Bashir’s regime in September last year. She was walking and talking on her phone when a police vehicle containing 15 men pulled up, she recalled.

“At first I refused to go with them,” she said. “I said, who are you? They started pushing me and I said this is kidnapping.”

She was blindfolded and held in two locations for half a day, taken up a stairway and held overnight, then moved again and finally incarcerated in a women’s prison.

“I was on my own for three days. It was like a grave. It was my first time to feel so afraid. I was thinking all the time about my children – maybe they will harm them. I was going crazy.”

She was freed after 10 days on a presidential pardon but given a warning. “They told me all the red lines against the security of Sudan that I mustn’t cross, and that they can reach me wherever I go.”

The incident had a profound impact on Habani’s two young sons. “It was a big psychological shock for them. Later Hafiz refused to let me go out, saying: ‘They will kill you.’”

Confiscations and questioning

Human Rights Watch reported that security officials instructed newspaper editors not to publish articles related to the September 2013 protests, confiscated editions of three newspapers, summoned several journalists for questioning, jammed the reception of international TV stations and shut down the internet for a day.

Habani, also a women’s rights activist who campaigned for the release of Meriam Ibrahim, the Christian woman sentenced to death for apostasy, has paid a price for her outspoken opposition. Despite holding a masters degree in communications, she now cannot find a job and has been turned away by many universities.

“Many things like this happen to me,” she reflected sadly. “I feel this is not my country. There is oppression and you can’t have a chance to live. You have economic pressure against you, as if you are something bad or ill. All the time they are trying to insult you. The many problems make you think, ‘Why am I doing this? Be silent like others and don’t ask about anything.’ But the good thing is the unity of human rights movements around the world.”

Habani, who recently travelled to New York to receive an award for her work from Amnesty International, refuses to give up the fight. “The regime is like a thief who comes to your home to take your things. You have to fight with him for your home or be killed.

“It makes me angry. But I insist to continue to the end to get a good nation, a good society to live with our dignity, or to die.”

Habani and other journalists in Sudan paint a grim picture of non-existent freedom of expression: around 20 newspapers are effectively controlled by the National Intelligence and Security Service, with only two or three having a genuine claim to independence. The state’s prohibited “red line” topics include the covert wars in Darfur, and Blue Nile and South Kordofan states.

“People in Khartoum may go on a demonstrations for Palestinian or Syrian people but rarely would they demonstrate for South Kordofan,” Habani said.

It’s our dream to one day see Sudan as a free democracy where a newspaper can play its role.

The battle goes on

In October there were claims that more than 200 women and girls had been raped by soldiers in Tabit in northern Darfur. Many activists believe that figure is likely to be exaggerated but say the government is paying the price for restricting media access to the region, creating an information vacuum in which rumours thrive.

Awad Mohamed Awad, a publisher and editor speaking three days after copies of his newspaper, Al Jareeda, were confiscated yet again, said: “I forget how many times we’ve suffered this. For us it’s like a disease; we’ve learned to live with it. It’s our dream to one day see Sudan as a free democracy where a newspaper can play its role.

“Right now we are not free. For me the chief editor of all newspapers is the intelligence service. A month ago we had one of these guys in the office watching each word of the paper before publication.”

Awad said his staff have been jailed for “offences” such as reporting on an opposition party meetings, or defending a woman who accused the police of rape. But the battle goes on, he added. “We believe we are doing journalism for smart people who also learn to read between the lines. I’ve got fighters in my team pushing me not to stop. Many are young people sacrificing themselves for low salaries and working in difficult conditions.”

Another leading journalist, Faisal Mohamed Salih, was punished for an appearance on Al Jazeera in which he described a speech by Bashir, who referred to southerners as “insects”, as unacceptable for a political leader. He was interrogated, told not to speak to foreign media and ordered to report to an office every day for 15 days.

“We call it detention without cost,” he said wryly. “I would sit in a chair in the office from 9am until evening, then go back home. There was no food or water. After four or five days I brought newspapers, which I enjoyed reading.”

Salih, 52, founder of Teeba Press, a NGO that trains young journalists, believes there was a “golden era” for the press in Sudan from 2005 to 2010, not by international standards but compared to the past, and a relatively liberal political atmosphere. Now, however, the country is regressing.

“This is a dictatorial regime, no question about it,” he said. “They don’t pretend not to be.”