Reporting Sudan: Domestic repression and distance in exile

Muhammed Osman is a new member of the corps of journalists who have fled repressive regimes to work from the region’s primary press haven, Nairobi. I was put in touch with him by a friend working in the region for the UN.

Muhammed is an associate editor of The Sudan Tribune, a major news website based in Paris. One highlight of our interviews was his summary of his paper’s coverage of the emergence of South Sudan, which is scheduled on 8 July 2011 to become the world’s newest nation. He also spoke about his life and career, raising issues of ethnicity and racism, and about the history and current state of Sudanese journalism. In the middle of the first interview, we were interrupted by a phone call inviting him to a celebratory dinner for South Sudan that evening.

CHILDHOOD AND CAREER

RON SINGER: Where, in Sudan, are you from?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: The north – born in Omdurman [which is across the Nile from Khartoum">. I grew up in Saudi Arabia, where my father used to work as a translator for the US Navy.

[After some years in Saudi Arabia, his parents separated, and his mother took him back to Sudan.">

MUHAMMED OSMAN: I attended intermediate and secondary school in Omdurman. My father and mother didn’t tell me what was going on, but I sensed something.

RON SINGER: That they were getting divorced?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yah. By then, my father was working for a private company. After one year of secondary school, we went back to Saudi Arabia, where I did the last two years of secondary school. It was really terrible.

RON SINGER: What was terrible?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Everything. The society. Even back in my days, especially the education. When I was eight, I still remember, before Eid, the Islamic holiday where they slaughter the sheep, they called for a meeting of our parents. The religious teacher told our parents that the next day we should take our children to the slaughterhouse to see how sheep are slaughtered so that, when they grow up, they know how to slaughter Christians and Jews.

RON SINGER: Was that a school with Saudi students, also?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes. And they wonder where terrorism comes from. Not from Afghanistan, from Saudi Arabia. Textbooks taught us that we shouldn’t tolerate other people. They should be slain, shouldn’t live in this world. In Sudan, they don’t teach you stuff like that. The war on terror should be fought where it comes from.

RON SINGER: So you finished school there. Did being from Sudan matter?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes, I was subjected to some … racism from fellow-students. These people are very racist. They kept calling me a nigger. Once, I came back to my room to find my desk full of faeces. I went and complained to the religious teacher, and he promised to do something about it, but he didn’t.

RON SINGER: Any idea why not?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: I think he was genuinely unhappy, but he couldn’t do anything to rich Saudi students. To some extent, I was glad when the truth between my mother and father … when it ended again.

RON SINGER: Oh, God, again! How old were you?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Seventeen. I was happy to go back to Sudan. Although, at first, I had not liked Sudan, I had grown accustomed to it. I had made friends.

RON SINGER: And nobody called you names.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yah. But, unfortunately, people call other people names. But that’s why I make sure I stand up to racism wherever I find it.

RON SINGER: To which ethnic group do you belong?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Me? I belong to the same people who ruined everything, the Jaliya tribe, the one from which Bashir comes.

RON SINGER: Is there some pressure to keep group solidarity?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Of course. People will say, ‘How come you are betraying your own kind?’ I’m not ‘betraying my own kind.’ Racism is racism… So I went back to Sudan, to university.

RON SINGER: Did you like university?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: I wasn’t there long enough to like it or not. I just took the classes, I didn’t know people. In 2000, I saved enough to go to university without working. This is where I began to develop some interest in politics, to become politically active.

RON SINGER: Which university?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Nileean University. It had been Egyptian… Everyone in Sudan does military service, but I was excused from full military because of my physical condition – I was asthmatic. Instead, I worked as a doorkeeper at the Ministry of Culture for a year. Imagine spending your life watching the door!

RON SINGER: So you were a journalist in Sudan before you came here?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes. I graduated from university in 2004. I worked for two years for a British charity in Sudan, in education. Then, I drifted into journalism in 2007. I’ve always been interested in news, media. So I started working for a local newspaper, Al Ahdath [confiscated by Sudanese security forces in 2008">. After a year, I worked for an English newspaper called The Juba Post [the first independent newspaper in South Sudan">. Then I got a job with BBC, monitoring local news, radio.

RON SINGER: What was the job, exactly?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: I read all the local papers for them. It was a good job, I learned a lot, worked with very professional people. I did that for four years while I was also freelancing with other newspapers. Then I got offered the Sudan Tribune job. I was unable to work in Khartoum, since Sudan Tribune is not welcome there, because they consider our reporters to be hostile to the government.

RON SINGER: Who offered you the job?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: The head of the Sudan Tribune, this guy in Paris.

RON SINGER: Do you know him?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes, we met in Khartoum, we had a conversation. Then, he called me and said, ‘I want you to work for me.’

REPORTING FROM AND ABOUT SUDAN

RON SINGER: What do you report on?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Things they don’t allow the local press to report on. Because we are not based in Sudan, they can’t censor us.

RON SINGER: What about foreign reporters operating in Sudan?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: They are relatively free. But they are also very cautious. Sometimes, they have to tip toe to avoid getting in trouble. Two years ago, two foreign journalists were expelled. For the government, their presence is good, as long as they don’t report any anti-government activities. The government doesn’t really worry about them, because they write in English.

RON SINGER: If they write in English and people read them in other countries, the government can say, ‘See how open we are!’ – same as in Ethiopia.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes, exactly. English has a narrow readership in Sudan. The government don’t want people to read the truth. Sudan Tribune has been reporting in English since 2006. But, recently, we launched an Arabic website.

RON SINGER: Were you harassed by the government while you were still in Sudan??

MUHAMMED OSMAN: No. I kept a very low profile, I didn’t do a lot of public reporting. I did a lot when I went outside the country. I didn’t apply [for a permit">; I just went to some neighbouring countries. I went to Ethiopia first. I liked Ethiopia, I still think about it a lot. The good thing about my work is that I have the freedom to work from anywhere I like, wherever I have my internet, my laptop. I thought I’d do a year in every country. Maybe, next time in Kigali [capital of Rwanda">, then in Ethiopia.

RON SINGER: So, when you left Sudan, did you come directly to Nairobi?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes.

RON SINGER: When, exactly?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: About three months ago.

RON SINGER: Are you now pretty well established here?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Not yet. Just last month, I obtained my journalist’s card here.

RON SINGER: How do you work from here?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Most of my work is related to Sudan. So I phone people, I send emails. I’m an editor. I edit stories by other reporters. Sometimes, their English is not very good. So you have to clean it up, add a few details. Sometimes, I do reporting, whenever it’s possible.

RON SINGER: What kind of stories can you report on, long-distance?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Whatever happens, because I still keep many contacts in different parts of Sudan. I haven’t severed my connections.

RON SINGER: But will you be able to do that over time?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: That’s the question. But the thing is, we have a network of contacts. It’s not only me working, I have two other editors. We’re very confidential, which is one of the reasons people trust us. We make sure we’re very accurate and that we don’t endanger people. I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep these contacts for long, but I hope so, because these are people I know, my friends.

RON SINGER: I don’t know. In my culture, if someone is a good friend, but you haven’t seen him for 10 years …

MUHAMMED OSMAN: First of all, I believe people are the same. Across different oceans, people are the same.

RON SINGER: But that’s a half-truth. We’re all people, and we’re all from our cultures.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes, but I have friends from other cultures, from your culture, and I can tell they are there, they are going to be there, always. There are also people I know from my own culture, who I know will not be around for long. It depends on the individual.

RON SINGER: Are things intercepted?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: No. Usually, I go for people I trust.

RON SINGER: They don’t listen in?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: They do, sometimes. But not to everyone. I know who they might listen in to.

RON SINGER: That’s a big thing in Ethiopia.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: I know. The amount I had to do to get a sim card there!

RON SINGER: The same with me. I wound up borrowing one from a friend of a friend.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: They only have one company, state controlled. In the US there’s competition, free market. A free market means a freer communication environment. It’s very strict in Ethiopia, compared to Sudan. In this regard, Sudan is much better…

Personally, my view … on [Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmad al"> Bashir’s indictment by the ICC [International Criminal Court"> for war crimes, etc. in Darfur...

RON SINGER: On the record?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: [He sighs."> Yes, on the record. I should tell you that I have no intention of going back to Sudan again.

RON SINGER: Unless the government changes?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes. But I don’t see myself going back anytime soon. So … enough of being afraid. The arrest warrant was a really big thing. I personally believe that African leaders need to be held accountable. You can’t launch a counter-insurgency campaign that kills hundreds of thousands, displaces so many, causes so much misery, and expect to get away with it.

Inside Sudan, this is a taboo issue – you don’t get to report it. I worked for a local newspaper when the indictment was handed down [in July 2008">. Since 1997, the government has imposed what we call pre-printing censorship. Agents of Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services visit newspapers at night and delete any articles, columns, that are deemed anti-government or reporting on controversial issues.

This is one of the reasons I quit my job at that newspaper. It was so frustrating to spend so much effort, so much time – even a week – and then comes this security agent who’s not even educated, and says, ‘No, it’s not possible.’ So I decided, I’d rather work free or not work at all.

RON SINGER: You’ve been covering Bashir’s indictment?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: We’ve had a few interviews with the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo – an Argentinian. [e.g. www.sudantribune.com/INTERVIEW-ICC-prosecutor-may-open,37210 - Cached">

RON SINGER: Let’s suppose Bashir does get tried and convicted. What would that mean to the country?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Personally, I don’t think it would cause any radical change. Bashir is only a person, an individual, and this government is not really surviving on people. It’s a system, and the system is not going to change if he goes. It will be a big thing, but it will not be enough to bring about radical change.

RON SINGER: Tell me more about the history of the press in Sudan.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: The government controls the media, especially radio and television. Newspapers have relative freedom. There were times when we had more, but we deteriorated.

RON SINGER: When?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: July 2008. The Sudanese government made an attempt to topple the government of Chad by arming rebel groups. The government was thinking that was the only way to stabilise Darfur [whose people had been"> supported by Chad’s president. Those Chadian rebels made it all the way from the Sudanese borders to N’Djamena, the capital, to the presidential palace. Then, France intervened, and the rebels suffered in-fighting. So when Sudanese journalists started objecting…

RON SINGER: You, included?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: No, at that time, I couldn’t write that. But a few journalists questioned the government’s right to spend all this money to overthrow the ruler of another country. They asked what we gained from this. So the government started to silence the press.

RON SINGER: Those journalists were also presumably against what was happening in Darfur.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes, a lot of them.

RON SINGER: So it wasn’t just the money.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: I personally think that policy was never going to help the Darfur situation. Even Déby, the president now, was bought by Sudan, and look what happened: he turned against them. Once you bring someone to power and topple someone else, that person will be very suspicious of you.

RON SINGER: Plus he has to deal with all the displaced persons, a big economic issue.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes. Ever since that point, we’ve had the pre-printing censorship system. A lot of people quit journalism over that.

SOUTH SUDAN

RON SINGER: Did you do stories on the referendum?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes.

RON SINGER: Did your paper have a line they took, a view of what was going on?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: We intensified our coverage of the south in the run-up to the referendum. Also, the north. Of course, for us, as for anyone who was following Sudan, the outcome was a foregone conclusion. My opinion was that we shouldn’t invest our forces in covering the election, since it was a foregone conclusion. What we need to focus on is the aftermath.

RON SINGER: There are also trouble spots.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Exactly, flash points. We focused our reporting on the Abyei area. [e.g. http://www.sudantribune.com/South-Sudan-reports-mass,39035">

RON SINGER: Excuse my ignorance, but is that the disputed area?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Exactly.

RON SINGER: Because that’s where the oil is?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: No, not the oil. That’s a common mistake in journalistic shorthand. The area produces less than 1 per cent of Sudan’s annual output. The major reason behind the dispute is because Abyei is an area of tribal overlapping.

RON SINGER: So the Khartoum government wasn’t trying to keep the South from seceding to save the oil.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Not over Abyei. Actually, they coveted the oil in the south, most of Sudan’s oil is from the south. But Abyei is sensitive because there are tribes from north and South Sudan. Because the borders are not demarcated, it increases the volatility of the area.

RON SINGER: So what happens now? The north is going to have to buy the oil from the south like anybody else?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: No, what’s happening is, the oil is in the south, but the infrastructure, the pipelines, are all in the North. The south’s government has no way of exporting its oil at the moment. South Sudan is landlocked. They have the option of building a pipeline through Lamu, in northern Kenya, on the Indian Ocean.

RON SINGER: Is that the closest way?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes. But the option of constructing a pipeline to Lamu is less economically viable. It would take ages to do it.

RON SINGER: And meanwhile…

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Meanwhile, the economy is completely dependent on oil. What they’re doing now is working out an agreement to use the infrastructure in the north, and the north will get something out of it. Not as much as it is currently getting, which is 50–50. They will process the crude and take it to the export terminals, also in the north. We don’t have the details yet.

RON SINGER: It’s in both sides’ interest to have such an agreement?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes. Forty-five per cent of the north’s budget is dependent on oil. The oil has turned from a curse into a blessing.

RON SINGER: A basis for cooperation.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Exactly, that’s the case now. That’s the reason they averted a return to war. Both sides knew very well that war would be very costly and that they can’t afford to go to war.

RON SINGER: And they know what it’s like.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Exactly. You don’t benefit from that. In the north, there’s indifference to the south’s secession. Many say, ‘Good riddance!’ Their own [the north’s"> government is weak, and they blame it. We focus on the south because this is where people are excited. We are focusing on the ongoing post-referendum talks to see how they resolve the contentious issues, like Abyei, refugees, currency, especially the economic stuff.

RON SINGER: What about the factions in South Sudan? Will they be able to form a viable coalition?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes, yes. Some people in the north, especially the government, are saying that Southerners are not going to be able to run their own state because of the ethnicity. Like Sudan, itself, because, to be honest, they weren’t successful, either. There’s a little bit of hypocrisy there. The country’s falling apart, actually. The root cause of all Sudan’s problems is the concentration of power in certain areas and in the hands of certain people, the main ethnic groups in north Sudan. They dominate wealth, power, even culture. They define this country as an Arab-Islamic country. The reality is that there are people who are not Arabs, who are not Muslims. Sudan is a diverse country, and now we have lost this country because we lost an important part of that diversity – people from the south. Because we mistreated, excluded people who do not fit the definition of the country as Arabs…

RON SINGER: It’s like the US preaching about fair elections after what happened to Al Gore.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes. The last few days, there were a few disturbing incidents in the south, clashes of ethnic groups. A minister in the new government has been assassinated. This is giving some South Sudan detractors an opportunity. It is too early to judge South Sudan.

RON SINGER: Ethiopia probably hopes it will succeed.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: It is in everyone’s interest that the south becomes viable.

RON SINGER: The US too.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Exactly. Nobody needs another Somalia.

RON SINGER: We need all the stable, hopefully democratic, countries in the region we can get.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Well, it doesn’t even have to be democratic. Stable.

RON SINGER: If it’s stable, we’ll call it ‘democratic’. Does your paper talk about the political future of South Sudan?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: We do write analysis.

RON SINGER: So when you write, say, an editorial on South Sudan, do you write in a way to try to encourage them? A basic question: advocacy versus objectivity.

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes. We don’t actually write editorials. I write analysis: I display facts and draw conclusions.

RON SINGER: If the conclusions would hurt the stability of South Sudan, would you still draw them?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes, I would. It doesn’t matter to me, the stability – if it pisses off some people. I would just speak my mind.

RON SINGER: Isn’t the idea that, in the long run, you can’t have stability based on lies?

MUHAMMED OSMAN: Yes. Exactly. You need to tell people what to expect, this is most important to all journalism.

CONCLUSIONS

The practice of journalism under repressive regimes raises the question of neutrality (which is not the same as ‘balance’) versus advocacy. As he said, Muhammed Osman’s position is to lets the chips fall where they may. Obviously, this is only one of several possible positions.

Muhammed’s affection for Ethiopia calls attention to the hierarchy of repressive regimes in the Horn of Africa. In my own opinion, Sudan and Ethiopia are neck-and-neck, both of them trailing Somalia and Eritrea.

Since he had left Sudan for Nairobi only three months before these interviews took place, Muhammed had yet to run up against the problem faced by many journalists in exile from repressive regimes: as their sources dry up, they become increasingly unable to report news, so they turn increasingly to analysis. This might not be so bad if there were other sources of hard news from these countries. Of course, analysis has its own uses, notably sorting out the mass of disinformation and confusion spawned by media suppression in repressive nations.

‘Sudanese journalists faced a familiar, toxic combination of censorship, legalistic harassment, and intimidation … Self-censorship was widespread among Sudan's beleaguered press, while security agents regularly prevented coverage of topics deemed sensitive, including Darfur, the International Criminal Court (ICC), human rights issues, official corruption, secessionism, and state censorship itself.’
CPJ, ‘Attacks on the Press 2010: Sudan,’ 10 December 2010, www.cpj.org/mideast/sudan/

AFTERMATH

In recent months, dramatic developments have begun to test Muhammed’s optimism about the future of South Sudan and its relations with Sudan. On 23 May 2011, owing in part to power struggles within the ruling party, the northern army occupied Abyei. A week later, after the south appeared to accept this incursion, northern forces threatened two further border areas, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile. Like Abyei, both of these areas have long been contentious, but, unlike Abyei, Southern Kordofan is bristling with former liberation fighters. Since there is no easy way for them to flee south, and since they would be loth to surrender to the northern army, renewed fighting seems possible. To make matters even worse, in recent months, internal ethnic and factional violence has broken out in several parts of South Sudan. Whether these developments will undermine the bases for ultimately amicable relations between the two nations remains to be seen.

(Jeffrey Gettleman and Josh Kron, 'Sudan threatens to occupy 2 more regions in dispute with south,' The New York Times, Monday 30 March 2011, pp. A4 & A6; Muhammed Osman, 'North Sudan’s ruling party risks implosion as internal rifts come into view,' Sudan Tribune, 25 April 2011; and “South Sudan army clashes with rebel group, over 100 dead,” Sudan Tribune, 9 March 2011)

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* These two interviews – conducted on 11 and 23 February 2011 – with Muhammed Osman will be incorporated into a chapter about the press in countries in and around the Horn of Africa in Ron Singer’s book, ‘Uhuru Revisited’ (Africa World Press/Red Sea Press).
* Please send comments to editor[at">pambazuka.org or comment online at Pambazuka News.