Sudan frees 4 journalists, 5 people still held
June 20, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Sudanese authorities on Wednesday released four journalists detained a week ago trying to report on violent protests against the construction of a new dam in the Kajbar area in northern Sudan.
Five other people, including three lawyers, arrested along with the journalists remain in custody, the journalists said.
“We were freed early this morning,” Gadhafi Abdul al-Mutalib Saeed, a journalist from the independent al-Ayam newspaper, told Reuters. He and the others were detained on June 13.
“Nobody told us why we were arrested or what law we had broken,” added Abu Ebeida Awad Hamid, who works for the opposition al-Rai al-Shaab daily.
The other detained journalists work for the independent al-Sudani newspaper and the Islamist al-Wan.
“They asked me about the other people, my relationship with them and if I planned to write a story about what happened in Kajbar for a foreign publication,” Saeed said. State security officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
Police clashed with demonstrators in Kajbar last week, killing four. Locals said the government had not consulted them on plans to construct the dam there which they said would force them from their villages and harm the environment.
Hamid said the detention of journalists flew in the face of government claims of increased press freedom in the country.
“There is no such thing as press freedom here,” he scoffed.
The journalists’ rights group Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) has said that while there was a “degree of freedom” in the Sudanese media, press freedoms were often flouted.
Government officials said that the people of Kajbar had overreacted and blamed opposition politicians for inciting the people against a project that was still under study.
“No work has started there. Experts are still studying the feasibility of constructing the dam,” said an official with the Dams Implementation Unit, a governmental body that answers to the presidency.
The official, who asked not to be named, said locals had been consulted and had given their consent before the study was commissioned early this year.
Hamid said they were treated well in detention.
“They just made us sit up on chairs all night,” he said.
(Reuters)