Sudan resumes pre-publication censorship of newspapers

May 19, 2010 (KHARTOUM) – Agents from the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) stormed two newspapers in Sudan today confiscating and tearing down articles prepared for publication in Thursday editions.

“At 8:00 pm, three security officers came to the newspaper and tore up some material and opinion columns that were ready to go to print,” the deputy editor of Ajras al-Hurriya, Fayez al-Silaik, told Agence France Presse (AFP).

“We cannot have an issue tomorrow because they removed six pages and the paper is 12 pages long,” he told Reuters in separate statements.

NISS officers also went to the offices of the independent Al-Sahafa daily and demanded to see editorial material and opinion columns, an employee said.

Its editor-in-chief Al-Nur Ahmed Al-Nur told Reuters that three full pages were removed as well as other articles.

“I don’t see any reason for this,” he said. “We are an independent and objective paper and we expect to be dealt with in an objective manner.”

Al-Nur called the censorship a “step backwards in the democratic transformation of the country”. Al-Silaik said it was the biggest crisis to face Sudan’s press since a 2005 north-south peace deal ended decades of civil war, shared power and wealth and outlined a plan for democratic change in Africa’s largest country.

In 2009 the Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir lifted pre-publication censorship but warned journalists not to cross “red lines”.

This week Sudanese authorities also raided the printing house of the party’s daily newspaper Rai al-Sha’ab, confiscated all its copies and detained four employees. The newspaper is close to the Popular Congress Party (PCP) of Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi.

Al-Turabi, a fierce critic of President Bashir, was arrested at his home on Sunday.

Rai al-Sha’ab published a report alleging that Iran had constructed a weapon factory in the country aiming at supplying Islamic insurgents in Somalia and Yemeni Shiite rebels as well as Islamist Palestinian movement Hamas.

The Sudanese ministry of information said the publication of this report comes as the international community considers new sanctions against Iran over the nuclear file and tries to create a link between Sudan and Iran.

(ST)