Sudan’s El Tayar daily suspended indefinitely

On Tuesday, Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) suspended the publication of El Tayar newspaper for an indefinite period of time.

A day after the confiscation of El Tayar's print-run in Khartoum, a NISS officer informed the newspaper by telephone that it was suspended indefinitely.

Editor-in-Chief Osman Mirghani told Radio Dabanga that the security officer told him that the reasons for the decision “will be explained later”.

He did not rule out that the suspension of the newspaper must have been triggered by his editorials in which he sharply criticised the Finance Minister's proposal to lift subsidies on wheat, flour, fuel and electricity next year.

Mirghani considered the decision as “the first implementation of the president’s threats to the media”.

The editor-in-chief referred to the reaction of President Omar Al Bashir to the criticism in various Sudanese newspapers on the lifting of the subsidies.

In his address to the parliamentary caucus of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) on Monday, Al Bashir denounced the “media attacks” on the Finance Minister. He accused the Sudanese newspapers of conspiring against his government, and said that he will handle the media file himself in the future.

Press freedoms

The Sudanese Journalists Network (SJN) reported in November that press freedoms declined remarkably during the past months after the NISS changed its approach.

“In order to avoid international pressure, they began focusing on the repeated summoning of journalists instead of confiscating print-runs of newspapers,” a senior member of the Network told Radio Dabanga.

Apart from summoning journalists, the NISS widened the ‘red lines’ on particular topics, and banned the publication of views disagreeing with the government position on various issues, the SJN stated in its quarterly report.

The report also pointed to the NISS' increasing encroachment on personal property of journalists, its fabrication of news in order to create doubts about the credibility of the press, and the increased attacks on the electronic media.

Sudan ranks 174th out of 180 countries in the 2015 World Press Freedom Index.

Finances

Mahjoub Mohamed Salih (88), founder and editor-in-chief of El Ayam daily newspaper, told AFP in June that his job has never been so difficult as in this year. “Nowadays, newspapers face a long, unwritten list of off-limit topics. There isn't a red line; the whole picture is painted red,” he said.

 El Ayam has been confiscated less often than some other newspapers, but fear of financial losses Salih could suffer has made him cut his circulation to just 3,000 copies per day. He estimated that newspapers with a wider circulation of 20,000 per day could lose up to SDG30 million (almost $5 million) per confiscation, a significant amount in a country where most newspapers sell for SDG2 ($0.33).

Ashraf Abdelaziz, editor-in-chief of El Jareeda, told Radio Dabanga in May that the NISS intends to exhaust the newspapers financially, as they still have to pay their staff and the printing presses.