70 journos held after protest

2008-11-17 14:10

Khartoum - Sudanese police detained about 70 journalists, herding them into a truck after they protested against draconian censorship outside parliament on Monday, witnesses and reporters said.

Scores of journalists rallied outside parliament condemning the censorship which flouts the freedom of expression supposed to be enshrined in the country's interim constitution following the end of a north-south civil war.

A member of parliament came to talk to the reporters. After he went back into the building, police came and ordered all the remaining journalists into at least one waiting truck, said journalists.

They were driven to a police station in Omdurman, the twin city of Khartoum just across the Nile river, shortly after midday (09:00 GMT).

"We are about 70 journalists now in custody in Omdurman police station, near the passport department," said Murtada el-Ghali, the editor in chief of the daily newspaper Ajras Al-Hurriya.

"We are in one room. We are sitting on the floor. They took our names. I am the only editor in chief, but there are editing managers, high-ranking journalists, and 27 girls among us," he added.

"We were treated in a very harsh way. They made us sit on the seats in the lorry. We were more than 70, there was not enough room and they were hitting the outside of the lorry with sticks," he added before the phone went dead.

Two witnesses put the number of arrested journalists at 60 to 65. Another two reporters said initially that 100 had been driven away.

Police were not immediately reachable for comment.

Sudanese journalists this month stepped up protests against government censorship and the arrests of colleagues, staging a hunger strike on November 4 in a demonstration spearheaded by staff at the Ajras Al-Hurriya newspaper.

Sudan's interim constitution, which is supposed to guide the country through a six-year phased implementation of a 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended two decades of civil war, upholds freedom of the press and expression.

But laws guaranteeing press freedom have not been passed and security officials inspect the editions of every newspaper nightly.

Editors who resist censorship risk their publications being banned outright or confiscated from distribution offices.

- AFP