Sudan journalists stage strike in protest at censorship

Sept 16, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Around 100 Sudanese journalists began a week-long strike Saturday to protest against the recent wave of press restrictions in the country.

Writers and columnists from several daily newspapers met at the headquarters of the opposition Umma Party and declared their “vehement rejection of security censorship on the newspapers,” a columnist for the daily Al-Sahafa, Al-Haj Warraq said.

“The meeting also decided that all columnists and article writers stage a week-long strike from writing as of today (Saturday),” Warraq said.

The journalists will also submit a formal complaint to the Constitutional Court to review two legal statutes concerning the press, which they describe as “unconstitutional and provide the security (forces) with an excuse to intervene in publishing activities,” Warraq said.

The journalists are also to raise their complaints with the presidency, the parliament’s information committee and the National Press Council, he added.

On Thursday, the authorities banned an edition of the Al-Sudani independent newspaper for the second time in a week.

They stormed into the paper’s printing works late Wednesday and confiscated newspaper plates to prevent the edition from appearing on news-stands the following day, the paper’s editor Mahjub Urwah said.

Over the past week, several newspaper editors have complained of having had articles confiscated under the pretext of “protecting journalists” following the killing of a prominent Islamist journalist last week.

They said the media restricitions were “in contravention of the constitution and the spirit” of peace accords signed between the country’s southern rebels and Khartoum in 2005 to put an end to a decades-long civil war.

Before the peace deal was signed, Sudan was crippled by stringent media restrictions which began to ease with a new constitution calling for more freedom of the press.

(ST/AFP)