Continued press confiscations in Sudan

The National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) in Sudan has continued to confiscate newspapers from printing press for the third day in a row.

Yesterday it confiscated El Sayha daily newspaper from the printing press without any explanation.

The confiscation of El Sayha came after the confiscation of El Jareeda newspaper on Monday and Akhbar El Watan newspaper on Sunday.

The security services issued direct instructions to the editors of the newspapers not to write about the fuel crisis, the queues of vehicles, the prices and the liquidity crisis that hit the country and paralyzed the movement of trade and transportation in the capital and the states.

Yesterday the security services summoned journalist Ahmed Younes, the correspondent for the London-based Al Sharq Al Awsat newspaper and interrogated him for hours before releasing him on Tuesday afternoon.

Yesterday the Sudanese Journalists' Network said in a statement that the security interrogation with Younes was about a report published by Al Sharq Al Awsat entitled “Sudan … Operation Hummingbird (the Brotherhood version)” which predicted a “night of the long knives” between conflicting parties within Authority.

The Journalists' Network denounced the summoning of Younes, interrogating him and confiscation of newspapers.

Financial losses

On May 4, the International Day of Press Freedom, Sudanese journalists stressed that the confiscation of newspapers remains a tool of the security service to drain out newspapers’ budgets.

The costs of printing and loss of income from advertisements can amount to – depending on the size of the print-run – SDG 25,000 ($3,750) to SDG 100,000 ($15,000), according to two confiscated newspapers in November 2017.

* Based on the indicative US Dollar rate quoted by the Central Bank of Sudan (CBoS)