SPLM’s Arman slams halting of BBC radio relays in northern Sudan

By Muhammad Osman

August 9, 2010 (KHARTOUM) – The SPLM’s deputy secretary-general, Yasir Arman, has criticized the Sudanese government for suspending BBC Arabic radio relays in north Sudan, accusing the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) there of seeking to “control all media sources.”

Yesterday, Sudan took BBC Arabic broadcasts off FM radio in four main cities in the north, including the capital Khartoum. According to a statement that appeared on August 8 on the website of SUNA, the country’s official news agency, the Ministry of Media said it would be suspending the broadcasts of the BBC Arabic on FM radio as of the following day.

According to the ministry’s statement, the decision was “absolutely” not related to the content of BBC Arabic radio’s reporting but to “the fact that the BBC has carried out actions breaching the accord regulating the terms of its service and sanctity of national laws”.

These actions, says the ministry’s statement, include “illegitimate” bringing in of satellite equipments through the British Embassy’s diplomatic courier.

But the leader of the SPLM’s northern sector, Yasir Arman, sees ulterior motives behind the move.

“What’s happening is not a technical or procedural matter as it appears on the surface,” Arman told Sudan Tribune in exclusive statements yesterday.

Speaking from behind his desk at the offices of the SPLM’s northern sector in Khartoum, Arman said that “the issue of the satellite equipments that the BBC brought in took place more than two years ago but the BBC was not suspended back then”.

Arman dismissed the official reason as “a pretext”, adding that the move was “part of the NCP’s attempts to control all media sources that provide Sudanese citizens with information.”

“These attempts”, says Arman, “aim to render Sudanese citizens absent and deprive them of media and information sources so they only listen to the NCP’s media message broadcast by official media outlets and the majority of newspapers it controls.”

Arman said that the BBC issue was “related to the referendum, general freedoms and constant attempts to control our minds”

“The NCP is afflicted with astigmatism and is trying to block the sun by seeking to apply censorship even against the BBC,” Arman added sarcastically.

The SPLM is the former southern rebel movement that signed a peace deal with the NCP-controlled government in Khartoum in 2005, ending two decades of civil war between the Arab-Muslim dominated north and the south where most people are Christian or follow traditional beliefs.

BBC has been rendering its broadcasting services on FM radio in Sudan for ten years to a weekly audience of four million.

Jerry Timmins, the BBC World Service’s head of Africa, expressed disappointment over Sudan’s decision.

“We are very disappointed that the Sudanese people in northern Sudan are no longer able to access the impartial news and current affairs of BBC Arabic on FM radio,” he said.

The NCP has a penchant for controlling the media. Since seizing power in a military coup in 1989, the party has maintained an iron grip over broadcast media and continues to curtail freedom of newspapers through censorship, financial constraints and harassment of journalists.

(ST)