So, they finally admit it!

 I was very pleased to finally hear that the parliament has admitted the state’s failure to make progress on the issue of civil liberties, announcing that it intends to carry out a full investigation on the current ban on journalists and columnists.

What it was shock for me is that there was no any single attempt, from any of the official media regulatory bodies, to address the mentioned case of banning journalists and columnists from writing, and what was the ever worst is that the Sudanese Journalists Union (SJU) has denied that there are journalists being banned from writing! Arguing that, they (the SJU) have contacted the relevant authorities, who denied the case.  Despite the fact that many papers have been repeatedly confiscated often before going to print. Banned journalists and columnists include Haider Almakashfi, Khalid Fadul, Abu Dhar Alameen, Faiz AlSilaik, Rasha Awad, Zuhair al-Sarraj, Amal Habbani, Essam Jaafar, Abdullah Mujahid, and Al-Tahir Abu Jawhara.

We really hope that such investigation would help in solving all the issues that of concern to the freedom of expression and freedom of the press,  and we also hope that it would enable the Press Council and SJU to restore their rights to play their assigned role in protecting the journalists and newspapers and to put an end to restrictions on press and journalists, as well as the pre-censorship of the press and the ban on freedom of expression imposed by the National Security and Intelligence Services (NISS), and that all the parties aggrieved by the press to follow legal channels in future, as the hostility towards journalists and newspapers has recently reached a peak that calls for unity of all segments of the press community, because such violations threaten the future of journalism in the country.

Last but not least, we call on the authorities to return to their senses and to immediately stop the clamp down on the press and journalists as well to review their radical attitudes against freedoms of opinion and expression that are contrary to norms and international and humanitarian conventions.