S. Sudan blocks Sudan Tribune website over “hostile” coverage
July 18, 2017 (KAMPALA) – South Sudan government has admitted that it blocked access to the Paris-based Sudan Tribune website over its “hostile” news coverage.
“If they [Sudan Tribune website] have been disseminating hostile messages towards us then we have the authority to close them,” information minister Michael Makuei Lueth told Bloomberg Tuesday.
“So many countries have been closing down, even giving total blackout to such media houses which create hostility,” he added.
Multiple sources, however, confirmed that two other news websites were inaccessible on Monday after authorities directed internet providers to block them.
However, the Sudan Tribune and other banned websites remain reachable for our readers in South Sudan when they use Tor Browser or install applications like Fire Onion, Orfox and Tor nado on their smartphones.
The move comes barely two weeks after authorities arrested the head of the state-owned television, Adil Faris Mayat after the station failed to broadcast President Salva Kiir’s Independence Day speech.
Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called for the immediate release of Mayat, who has reportedly been held incommunicado since 10 July.
“We call for this journalist’s immediate release,” said Cléa Kahn-Sriber, the head of RSF’s Africa desk, adding “Frequent arbitrary measures of this kind by the security services and the accompanying impunity are killing media freedom in South Sudan and are holding back a return to peace and national reconciliation.”
After South Sudan obtained independence in 2011, a civil war broke out in 2013 and the ensuing political and security crisis has not spared the media. News outlets have been suspended, newspaper issues have been seized, and journalists have been detained arbitrarily, tortured, harassed, forced to censor themselves or forced to flee abroad.
The war-torn East African nation has fallen 20 places in RSF’s World Press Freedom Index since 2015 and is now ranked 145th out of 180 countries.
(ST)