Red Sea state Facebook blogger summoned by police

A blogger was summoned to appear at the Red Sea state police office for criticising the state government in a blog on Facebook.

On Thursday, the director of the Red Sea state police summoned Mohamed Karrar for criticising the governor in his blogs, and opposing the authority of the seaport in the eastern Sudanese state.

Activist Mohammad Karrar told Radio Dabanga that the police director faced him with pictures of his blog posts on Facebook. “He asked me to stop writing critical posts about the governor and the head of the sea ports corporation, and reflecting the news about the state in general.”

Karrar said that he adhered to the constitutional right to express and reflect his opinion about the state’s issues on social media. He called on the police to prosecute corrupt people, for example those cited in the reports of the auditor-general, instead of pursuing activists and bloggers.

People in Sudan surfing and publishing content on the internet faced numerous violations of user rights, obstacles to access the internet and limitations on their publications by the Government of Sudan in 2017, reported the international Freedom House last year.

Analysing all reported incidents of user rights violations and limits on content in Sudan, Freedom House ranked Sudan a 'not free' status with a score of 64 – 100 being completely not free – which is the same score as 2016.