For the elections, the Media are at the beck and call of the Government

Translated by Maurice Gruffat

Defamation and diffusion of false rumours are criminal offenses. The official position of the Government in this matter is based on Article 130 of the Penal Code, which makes violation of the secrecy of preliminary investigation by a law enforcing agency liable to prosecution and penal sanction. Last year the Court ordered the newspaper Al Sudani to be suspended for publishing an article on a case of money laundering involving the Minister of Justice, who has just been dismissed from his duties . In 2007 the legislation has somehow been relaxed: Al Midan , the communist weekly, and Sawat al Umma, the newspaper of the opposition party Umma, have been allowed to be published again for the first time since the coup d'état of 1989. Censorship had been suppressed, but autocratic obstructions and acts of censorship are getting more and more frequent was again enforced on February 6 th 2008. The National Publications and Press Council (NPPC) - which is, to all intents and purposes, under the control of the National Congress - gave orders, at the beginning of January, to some newspapers to stop working with some journalists . In the course of an address to the Press in February, Abdull ah Gosh, Head of the State Security, accused some journalists – without naming them – of being in the pay of foreign embassies, and he revealed that those journalists were under investigation . The State Security sends every day officials to the head offices of the newspapers to check on the contents of what is for publication in the next issue. Thus was censored the news that the Sudan was effectively supporting the Chad rebels, on the ground that it was a tendentious piece of information ( Rai al Shaab). So was an article on Gosh's speech in the Al Sahafa . So were the paragraphs on torture and bad treatments inflicted on prison detainees in the Al Midan . So was a quotation made by the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs when he made a public appeal to the Sudan for the cases of Kashayb and Ahmed Haroun to be handed over to the International Criminal Court . So was censored the report of the sentence acquitting al Midan, which had been taken to court by the State Security . So was the case reported by the same weekly of the support brought to displaced persons at the occasion of the opening of an office in Israel by Abd el Wahid el Nour . Seven journalists were arrested for writing articles on the changes made in the top ranks of the police force, from the following newspapers: al Adhat, al Watan, Akhir Lahza, al Rai al Am, al Wifaq . The Khartoum Monitor had to give $ 300.000 before February 29 th for arrears in taxation, a measure that could have contrived the newspaper to close down (SOAT 28-02 & 28-06-03). But neither the al Shahafa nor the Akhbar el Yom was censored although they had published wrong information concerning the incident involving a Eufor vehicle in the Sudan : they wrote that this vehicle had been attacked by a Chad commando. Why this deliberate lie? Or is it that Khartoum calls ‘truth' what is a “deliberate lie'? (SOAT). Reporters without borders brought to the knowledge of the public the arrest of four journalists by the State Security on June 16 th last year because they had wanted to cover a demonstration about the dam to be built at the third cataract ( Al Ayam, Rai al Shaah, Alwan ). They are also known to have been threatened with death for having supported the deployment of an international military force in Darfur ( Al Midan Al Shahafa ) . (R-s-f 2008 02 21)

Census of the population . Since ‘free' elections are scheduled by the APC for 2009, it becomes urgent for the Government to make a census of the population . A first census will begin on April 15 th . But there won't be any census in Darfur . As far as the elections are concerned, there is a big question mark.