(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter sent to General Omar Hassan al-Bashir on 6 July 1999, RSF protested the suspension of three dailies for one to five days and urged that publication be resumed, “as a move to protect press freedom in Sudan.” On 5 July, the National Press Council ordered the newspaper “Al-Raï Al-Akhar” to […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter sent to General Omar Hassan al-Bashir on 6 July
1999, RSF protested the suspension of three dailies for one to five days and
urged that publication be resumed, “as a move to protect press freedom in
Sudan.”
On 5 July, the National Press Council ordered the newspaper “Al-Raï
Al-Akhar” to be suspended for five days, “Alwan” for two days and “Al-Bayan”
for one day. Amal Abbas, editor-in-chief of the independent daily “Al-Raï
al-Akhar”, was summoned by the police after the military lodged a complaint
against articles she published concerning a 1998 plane crash in the
country’s south, in which the Sudanese vice-president was killed. On 22
June, while the daily was suspended for two days, she had been arrested for
publishing a speech by Mohamed Osmane al-Mirghani, the president of the
National Democratic Alliance, calling for resistance to the Khartoum regime
(see IFEX alert of 22 June 1999).
The two other dailies, “Alwan” and “Al-Bayan”, were suspended for publishing
information on alleged embezzlement by an official.
