By Joseph Oduha
April 15, 2019
Spurred by the success of the peoples’ uprising against the regime of Omar al-Bashir and its successors, advocates of media freedom in Sudan have issued an urgent call: ‘Liberate Sudan’s journalists from the confinement constituted by the rules imposed on them by the regime.
In a report broadcast by Dabanga, a Sudanese radio station, the Sudanese Journalists Network (SJN) issued the demand that the country’s radio and television be liberated from the “clutches” of state control.
SJN also called upon the signatories of the “Declaration of Freedom and Change” to take the steps required to make the country’s media free and fair – by ridding it of censor-driven supervision.
Encompassed in this is Sudan’s telecommunications sector, which has been used by Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) to track and apprehend dissent.
This tracking was behind the detentions of a large number of journalists over the last few months – and behind the banning of publication of magazines, as reported by Reporters Without Borders.