Editor to defy Sudan's paper ban

Newspaper editors complain of frequent censorship

The editor of Sudan's Citizen newspaper has told the BBC he will not comply with a government ban.

Nhial Bol said the order to stop publishing his paper was "political", and because the managing editor was from the war-torn Darfur region.

The Tribune has also had its licence revoked by the National Press Council, which denies the move is political.

Both papers are based in semi-autonomous South Sudan but are distributed nationally.

The BBC's Amber Henshaw in Khartoum says freedom of the press is supposed to be guaranteed by a 2005 peace deal between the north and southern-based rebels.

But she says editors often complain about censorship and print runs being stopped.

The security services check newspapers before publication, she says.

The National Press Council (NPC) says the papers were banned because they do not submit their papers for approval and are not based in Khartoum, as required by their registration.

Critical

Mr Bol said the requirement to send 10 copies of each edition to the NPC was "stupid".

"They can come and pick them up from our office," he told the BBC's Network Africa programme.

"This is a political situation - they do not want media that does not run to them," he said.

Mr Bol said NPC members had told him to replace his managing editor Izzadine Abdoul-Rassuou because he was from Darfur.

He also said he had told the NPC that he was not planning to be based in Khartoum.

The owner of the Tribune, William Ezekiel, also says the ban is political.

He says he has been told it is because of a series of articles critical of the government by three southern-based journalists, as well as his use of a reporter from Darfur.

Correspondents say that mainly Christian and animist South Sudan feels quite different from the Arab and Muslim-dominated north.

Under the peace deal, the south is due to have a referendum on whether to secede in 2011.

In the meantime, the former rebels run the south and share power in Khartoum.

As peace was returning to the south, conflict broke out in Darfur in 2003, where black African rebel groups complained of discrimination by the government.