Human rights organisation Amnesty International took the Sudanese authorities to task this week for seizing newspapers and demanded they end their curbs on press freedom.
”The Sudanese government and the National Security Agency must put an end to the confiscation or suspension of local newspapers,” London-based Amnesty said in a statement faxed to AFP’s Cairo office.
”The intimidation and harassment of journalists with the attempt of restricting the freedom of the press must end,” it added.
It was referring to the seizure of the entire press run — about 20 000 copies — of the June 27 edition of independent Al-Sahafa newspaper as well as the seizure of part of the June 29 edition, as reported by Al-Sahafa managers.
Amnesty said the June 27 seizure was a response to a piece critical of the government on the occasion of the 14th anniversary of the Islamist-backed coup on June 30 1989.
The journalist who ”wrote the opinion piece was summoned by security forces and warned not to criticize the government,” Amnesty said.
”A couple of days later, security forces ordered <>Al-Sahafa to remove a page containing three articles from their Sunday edition.
”After the wrong page was removed, security forces seized nearly 16 000 copies of parts of the paper.”
Censorship was officially abolished in December 2001, but the authorities have since confiscated newspapers, ordered several publications closed and arrested journalists.