Sudanese Regime Still Suppresses Press Freedom and Confiscates Newspapers After Being Published

Cairo: — The Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), today, condemned the Sudanese authorities' continuation of targeting freedom of the press and confiscating newspapers after printing them without mentioning any reasons; incurring these financial institutions great losses.

Sudanese Security and Intelligence bodies, on Tuesday February 4, confiscated the copies of "Al Jareeda", "Akhir Lahza" and "AlSudani" newspapers without clarifying the reason behind such a measure. This confiscation came a few hours after the Sudanese authorities on Tuesday morning, March 3, banned the copies of "AlSudani", "Al Ahram Al Youm" and "Alhurra" newspapers without mentioning any grounds.

Since the start of 2014, Sudanese authorities began to confiscate a number of independent newspapers without clarifying any grounds, harming them financially due to the high costs of printing newspapers' issues. Such a confiscation is an attempt to force those independent newspapers, which always refuse to be mouthpieces of the regime, to be shut in an indirect way.

ANHRI elaborated that, "Sudanese authorities' continual confiscation of newspapers contradicts the Sudanese President's statements during the past period, in which he alleged that he followed political reform procedures and increased the freedom in the country. Nevertheless, the actual practices proved otherwise, as these statements were merely to improve the image of the ruling regime in front of the international community, while the suppression of press freedom is still continuing.

Moreover, the Sudanese authorities' ongoing confiscation of newspapers without a warrant is a clear violation of freedom of expression and press freedom. This confiscation is to be added to the violations that have been committed recently by the regime. These violations included confiscating the newspapers, gag orders, banning journalists from writing for security reasons, arresting them and prosecuting them over malicious complaints.

The Arab Network urges Sudanese authorities to put pressure on the security bodies to respect freedom of expression and opinion as well as press freedom. It also call for freeing the press institutions from the security control and abolishing the post-censorship on newspapers.

Arabic Forum