Sudan / Middle East & North Africa

  
The border between Sudan and Eritrea is heavily patrolled. (AFP/Thomas Goisque)

For exiled Eritreans in Sudan, fear greater than most

With the launch of CPJ’s most recent exile report, I will have worked exactly three years for our Journalist Assistance program. More than 500 cases later, I have helped journalists who have gone into hiding or exile to escape threats; those in need of medicine and other support while in prison, and journalists injured after…

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Defining role of the press in genocide prevention

Talking about genocide prevention in the shadow of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camps brings an intense and unique gravity to the discussions. The academic presentations cannot extract themselves from the looming presence of the barbed wires and grim towers surrounding the Nazis’ most infamous death factory.

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Sudan’s press under siege

Press freedom in Sudan is rapidly deteriorating, with confiscation of newspapers by the security agency becoming a norm. The scope of violations committed against publications and journalists by the Sudanese National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) is widening by the day.

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Journalists with Al-Tayar protest government censorship of their paper. (Reuters/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah)

In Sudan, a new strategy to censor the press

Sudanese authorities have a long history of closing newspapers and silencing journalists. But the government security agents who carry out official censorship have launched a new strategy this year that focuses on economic impoverishment–leaving newspapers more vulnerable than ever.

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Remembering South Sudan’s pioneer female reporter

When The Juba Post’s star reporter, Apollonia Mathia, told me that so-called “tong tong” rebels had attacked again near Gumba, in southern Sudan, I looked at her warily. “Let me get the camera I’ll check it out,” she said. Apollonia planned to hop on our rickety motorbike to cover a story about the infamous Ugandan…

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Free expression in the Middle East & North Africa

On Thursday, I participated in a panel discussion about media in the Middle East at the United Nations to commemorate World Press Freedom Day. Other panellists included Alya Al-Thani, counsellor, Permanent Mission of Qatar to the United Nations; Abderrahim Foukara, chief of the Washington Bureau of Al-Jazeera; Ebtihal Mubarak, journalist for Saudi Arabia’s English-language daily…

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AP

Executions in editor’s murder trigger doubts, outrage

Sudan’s execution this week of nine men found guilty of involvement in the 2006 assassination of editor Mohammed Taha Mohammed Ahmed, left, is seen by many there as an outrageous miscarriage of justice, spurred by a thirst on the part of President Omar al-Bashir’s regime for settling scores with the rebellious region of Darfur.

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