Sudanese newspapers resume distribution after censorship

Sept 15, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Two privately owned Sudanese newspapers resumed distribution Friday but only after authorities censored the papers, one day after security officials seized all copies of both papers in an ongoing campaign of censorship, editors said.

Government security agents raided the publishing houses Thursday of both al-Sudani and Rayalshaab newspapers, seizing copies of the two Arabic-language papers.

Yassen Omar Imam, editor in chief of Rayalshaab, which belongs to the opposition-led Popular Congress Party, said that some government-related articles provoked the seizure.

He said the paper was distributed Friday but the government had censored controversial stories including those on the U.N. resolution calling for U.N. peacekeeping troops in the war-torn Darfur region, inflation and a Sudanese journalist who was slain recently.

Mahjoub Urwah, editor in chief of al-Sudani said his independent newspaper was on stands Friday but was without stories on fuel and sugar prices in Sudan.

“This is an inequitable action,” said Mahjoub Urwah, editor in chief of al-Sudani. “It is a clear breach for the constitution.”

The media watchdog group Reporters Without Borders condemned the seizure and said it was part of a “continuous wave of censorship in Sudan.”

The seizure came about 14 months after the government had promised an end to censorship and establish a free press under the new interim constitution.

But in early August 2005, security authorities raided printing presses and confiscated all the copies of two other daily independent newspapers that had criticized the state government and police for their handling of three days of rioting and looting in Khartoum.

(AP/ST)