Seated in his Khartoum office overlooking the Blue Nile, Sudanese journalist Adil al Baz no longer fears a crackdown by security agents over his articles since he launched an online newspaper.
“We are free to publish what we want on our online newspaper,” Baz, a former print newspaper editor, said at the office of Al-Ahdath, the website he launched this year.
In a country of increasing media censorship, Baz is among several independent journalists who have left newspaper jobs and launched online papers or websites.
About a dozen Internet papers have been launched in the past year alone as agents of the powerful National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) continue to confiscate entire print-runs of newspapers over articles opposed to President Omar al Bashir’s regime.
The authorities use several laws to curb press freedom, editors say.
“A print newspaper faces a new red line almost every day,” said Baz, who was jailed in the past for publishing articles critical of government policies. In 2012, he shut down his paper, also called Al-Ahdath, after NISS agents confiscated its copies.
After working in Qatar for four years, Baz returned to Sudan last year to launch Al-Ahdath.
The online journal has since run several stories criticising government policies, which he says would have been difficult to report in his print newspaper.
Earlier this year, said Baz, it was Al-Ahdath that first reported on Bashir sacking his senior aide Taha Osman, who now resides in Saudi Arabia.
Osman’s sacking was later hotly debated in the Sudanese media.
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranked Sudan 174th out of 180 countries on its 2017 world press freedom index.
The NISS “hounds journalists and censors the print media”, RSF said.
In November, NISS agents confiscated entire print-runs of independent newspapers Al-Tayar, Al-Jadida, Al-Watan and Akhir Lahza.
These journals lost thousands of dollars worth of advertisements, apart from the huge expenses of printing copies that never hit the stands.
Curbs on press freedom are expected to grow if the cabinet approves a new press law under which Sudan’s press council would be authorised to ban a newspaper for 15 days without any court order.
Sudan’s existing press law requires the council to file for a court order if it wants to ban a newspaper for any longer than three days.
The draft law also permits the council to cancel licences of journalists and newspapers. — AFP
Abdelmoneim Abu Idris Ali
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