Alintibaha accuses Khartoum governor of defamation!

Al-Tayeb Mustafa

The Alintibaha Arabic-daily newspaper has accused the Governor of Khartoum State Abdul Rahman Al-Khider of attacking and violating the freedom of the press, pointing out that the governor described the paper as a “subversive” newspaper.

In its sub-lead of its today’s edition, Alintibaha reported the governor as attacking it without mentioning its mane, “But he was clearly referring to Alintibaha”. The paper added.

The paper pointed out that, it has learned that, during the deliberations of the Council of Ministers, chaired by President Omar Al-Bashir last Sunday, on the Addis talks outcome, the governor described the paper as subversive, and called to deter and stop it, arguing that the most widespread and largest circulated newspaper is the only one of the newspapers that take a negative line in regard of the issues that related to South Sudan.

It is worth mentioning that the owner of the paper, Al-Tayeb Mustafa,who is the uncle of president Al-Bashir and head of the far-right Just Peace Forum (JPF), wrote in the paper’s website that he was prevented by the Sudanese security service (NISS) from publishing his weekly column on Saturday where he spoke about Addis Ababa agreements, He begged the Security apparatus to stop censoring his newspaper and to allow it to criticize the agreements to "enlighten the government on some imperfections" included in the deals. Sudan Tribune quoted Mustafa as stressing that the positive points in the deals more than items which he saw as disadvantages.

Mustafa went further to say that he was surprised by the return of censorship on newspapers describing it as unfortunate matter that continues to happen even after the Arab Spring revolutions which allowed to people in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia overcome the dark phase of totalitarian rule, adding that their writings would be very objective, pointing out that he would like to draw attention to the disadvantages of the deal to help the government in understanding the outcome of agreements.

Meanwhile, many journalists and columnists have called on the readers to support Alintibaha since it affirmed that it has changed its editorial line from being radical to become “objective”. Many other journalists criticized the paper of not defending the freedom of the press, while the other independent newspapers were being censored and prevented from publishing, until it came to them!!