Sudan Nile Dam Threatens To Drown Nubian Villages

KHARTOUM, Sudan — On the morning of June 13, 2007, Mohamed Fageer Sid-Ahmed spent one hour convincing his mother that he needed to participate in a protest taking place later that day to protect his land.

Osman Ibrahim Holding Booklet on Massacre

His mother was adamantly against the idea — he was her only child after all — but he won the argument and joined the protest. Thousands of Nubian women and men protested that day from different towns and villages that would be affected by the Kajbar Dam, a dam project proposed by the Sudanese government in the mid-1990s.

The protesters marched to the dam site to protest; after being hit by heavy tear gas, all of a sudden, live bullets were fired and Sid-Ahmed was the first victim to fall to the ground.

“He was shot in the back. At the time, he was giving water to the protesters, but police forces shot at the protesters from up the mountains,” said Osman Ibrahim, the secretary-general of the Higher National Committee to Resist the Kajbar Dam, in an interview with Al-Monitor.

With tears in his eyes, Ibrahim told the story of Sid-Ahmed and the story of his activism against the Kajbar Dam since 1995.

Ibrahim hails from Nubia, an area that stretches from northern Sudan to southern Egypt and dates back thousands of years.

When Egypt built the High Dam in the 1960s, tens of thousands of Nubians in Egypt and Sudan were displaced. In Sudan, they were resettled in an area far away from the Nile, the bloodline of their community.

“I feel that there is a conspiracy against Nubians, the government wants to get rid of us, they think we are all Communists,” said Ibrahim.

The government of Sudan stated through Yousef Tahir Qureshi, an adviser to the governor of Northern state, that the dam will generate 360 megawatts of electricity.

Qureshi told the Sudan News Agency (SUNA) earlier this month that two large-scale agricultural projects will be established and services will be offered to those resettled.

The head of the anti-dam committee, Ezzeldeen Idris, told Al-Monitor that it is unclear how many villages will drown.

“The dam implementation unit failed to provide us with a feasibility study that tells us how high the dam will be, so we can't clearly say how many villages will be submerged,” said Idris, who lives in Fareeg, one of the villages threatened.

Sometimes government officials make revealing statements about the dam, helping Nubians to estimate the extent of the damage.

“Qureshi said that the drowned area is 180 kilometers (112 miles), which means from Kajbar to Al-Guld, which is 25-30 kilometers from Dongola, the capital of Northern state,” Ibrahim said.

Arif Gamal, a Nubian scholar now teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote on RescueNubia.org that in 1964, as Nubians were being transported by train from their soon-to-be submerged villages, one woman left the train and ran back to the village. There was confusion on board for some time, and then as people were preparing to follow her, they saw her coming back. She went to lock her house, she told everyone.

The woman's house was locked, but soon submerged in water. Half a century later, Nubians refuse to go through the same ordeal.

“What is happening is seriously making us think about secession, why would we want to be in a state that wants to drown our villages along with our culture and history?” Ibrahim asked, bitterly.

Ibrahim was detained for a month in a wave of arrests of Nubian activists following the 2007 protest. He spent a year in detention in the 1970s for political activism when he was a student.

Now in his late 60s, he walks around with a file full of statements by the committee, pictures of the protests and what the committee calls the “Kajbar massacre.”

The police center in Kajbar refused to open the complaint into the 2007 killings, so activists took the struggle to the international community through Rescue Nubia, a Washington-based organization led by Nubians in diaspora.

After the 2007 incident, the government grew silent about the dam project, before speaking again about the ambitious $1.5 billion project financed by China.

Even with the attractive development projects proposed by the authorities, the Nubians oppose the dam because it will drown their history and disperse a group of people whose identity is tied to this land.

“If they want to give us services in exchange for the dam, they are too late, we already built a hospital and are building a secondary school for girls now in Fereeg,” Idris said, adding that the residents have also sustained a collective agriculture project since the 1950s through donations.

For the Nubians, the experience of the Manasir, an ethnic group displaced by the Merowe Dam — a multibillion dollar project completed in 2010 — makes them hesitant to even consider the Kajbar Dam.

After waiting for compensation for years, 1,500 men from the Manasir took matters into their own hands and went to El-Damer, the capital of River Nile state, 300 kilometers (190 miles) from Khartoum, and organized a sit-in that lasted three months.

Although other groups were also affected, the Manasir were the most affected and were kept waiting for government compensation.

The protesters demanded to be compensated; finally, a delegation from the government signed a memorandum of understanding with the Manasir in March 2012. 

“The agreement is on paper, but the reality is we have not been compensated for our land. We want to be resettled around the lake, but the government wants to resettle us far away,” said Al-Rashid Al-Affendi, of the Executive Committee of the Manasir People Affected by the Merowe Dam, in an interview with Al-Monitor.

Affendi added that the only compensation received was for the lost palm trees since they represented a large resource for the Manasir.

Peter Bosshard, the policy director at International Rivers, a US-based environmental and human rights organization that published reports on Kajbar Dam, said that this is an international test case.

“The Kajbar Dam is an international project, and international actors — particularly from China — share a responsibility for it. The human rights violations caused by the Merowe Dam have tarnished the reputation of the Chinese companies and financiers involved in the project,” Bosshard said in an email interview with Al-Monitor.

The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights filed a complaint against two executives at Lahmeyer International GmbH, a German engineering company that was a consultant in the Merowe Dam project.

In the villages of Nubia that will be affected by the dam, electricity is not available the whole day, but the citizens there confirm that there are many other ways to generate electricity other than the dam.

“Our area is very hot, they could try providing us with solar energy,” said Idris.

Bosshard agreed.

“Sudan has a solar energy potential and a big wind energy potential that is much less damaging than the Kajbar Dam and other projects on the Nile.”

First Published: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/05/sudan-kajbar-dam-nubians.html#ixzz2TgUynVE5

The new press law: violations and restrictions or transformation and freedom?

Recently, Rishan Oshi, received a job offer from a newspaper in Khartoum.  The young journalist, whose last job was working as an editor for Al-Tayar before it was closed down by the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) for unknown reasons last summer, was very excited about getting back to work.

The negotiations with the newspaper were underway when the newspaper backtracked, one of the editors working there objected to hiring her claiming that Rishan is a NISS target.  He called her “trouble”.

“Last June, we received a phone-call from the NISS, telling us that Al-Tayar is suspended, we were told that they still don’t know the reasons,” Oshi told DCMF.

Al-Tayar’s staff still doesn’t know the reasons. After months of protesting and campaigning for their newspaper, they began looking for other job opportunities during the worst period for journalism in Sudan and for job opportunities in the journalism field.

Last year, the crackdown on the press in Sudan resulted in financial losses for newspapers in Sudan due to low advertisements and confiscations of entire issues of newspapers at printing houses, as well as an unstable work environment for journalists who are left unpaid for months.

Over fifteen journalists were stopped from writing directly by the NISS, while others such as Oshi are isolated until “readers forget their names and they are out of the market,” as she puts it.

A new press law – the worst in years?

Last December, the press woke up for another day of fighting to survive, to find the parliament debating a new press law.

“The press laws were proposed at a time when the country is going through a constitution-making process.  It makes sense to finalise the constitution before focusing on press laws,” said Faisal Al-Bagir, a journalist and a press freedom activist.

Al-Bagir, who coordinates the Sudanese Journalists for Human Rights network, believes that this press law is the worst since Sudan’s first press laws in 1930.

To be exact, this is the fifth press law in the last two decades.  However, from the outset, the 2013 press law had unknown parents, each side was claiming that it was not their baby.

Idris Al-Douma, the editor-in-chief of one of the best-selling independent newspapers in Sudan, Al-Jareedasaid that “the new regrettable laws are meant to shut down the mouths of journalists.”

Al-Douma knows about restrictions, his newspaper has been confiscated many times since it opened in 2010, and was suspended for more than 3 months in 2011 leading to heavy financial losses.

In the language of the NISS, confiscation means that an entire issue is seized from the printing house during the night, after it has been printed. Although the NISS calls a number of chief editors in the evening to revise the material published in the newspaper, and assists them in editing the newspaper, they sometimes confiscate the newspaper if the newspaper insists on publishing a specific article, or as retribution for publishing an article.

Even when there is freedom of expression, there is no freedom after expression.

“I was taken to court many times for my writings, my last trial was two months ago and I was declared innocent,” said Oshi.

New forms of censorship

If the NISS acts as a censor, the press laws will compete with the intelligence agency as a strong censor.

The new press laws, if passed, will legalise the closure of newspapers, the cancellation of the registration of a newspaper or a publishing house. They will impose financial penalties on the newspapers as well as the printing houses and also stop journalists and editors working for periods of time.

In the 2009 laws, a newspaper could be suspended legally for three days.  The new law stipulates that the period can last up to ten days, which will cause heavy financial losses for the newspapers.

“The 2009 laws were worst when they were first proposed,” recalls Abdel-Rahman Al-Amin, the editor-in-chief of the newly-founded Al-Qarar newspaper, adding “the government at the time was a national unity government and the opposition was better represented which helped the laws get reformed.”

Al-Qarar newspaper is an independent newspaper created by journalists who wanted to see a newspaper that is not controlled by businessmen.

“A big factor in the 2013 laws is that the printing house which was previously just a venue for printing the newspaper, becomes a target for closure or financial penalties, which could easily turn the printing house into another censor,” said Al-Amin.

Violations of press freedom?

Some articles from the 2013 press laws, explained Al-Bagir in a phone interview, were taken from the Ethiopian press laws, which are among the worst in the world.

Commenting on the new press laws, Mohy Al-Deen Titawy, the president of the Sudanese Journalist’s Union (SJU) told members of the press that the laws violate press freedom, expressing his union’s opposition to them.

Surprisingly, the new press laws sets to take journalists’ licenses from the SJU and pass them to the National Council for Press and Publications (NCPP), a council that monitors the press in the country and gives newspapers or magazines the license to print.

The NCPP, with its well-respected leadership, is seen by journalists as a governmental body as it is under the supervision of the presidency and the presidency appoints its secretary-general.

However, Al-Amin views this move as a positive one as it “controls the distribution of the press license which many journalists have, yet small number practice journalism.” This perspective is understandable as even the police officers at the press prosecutor’s office can get a press license after a number of years of working there.

Journalists in Sudan hope to see the judiciary play the sole role in persecuting journalists and newspaper.

“The Council, which is the body responsible for protecting journalists and newspaper is failing in this regard, it is failing press freedoms,” said Al-Amin whose newspaper staff work as volunteers, six months after the newspaper was launched.

The NISS, although it takes journalists and newspapers to court, does not always win the case.

The Sudanese Communist Party’s Mouthpiece, Al-Midan, for instance, won its case against NISS after a court battle.  However, it remains suspended for unknown reasons.

Hopes for political transformation

In the last week, the President of Sudan, Omar Al-Bashir called for the release of political detainees and for a more open dialogue with the opposition in an attempt to foster an inclusive political process.

With the elections coming up in less than two years and the president stating that he will not run for another term, there are good reasons for optimism in Sudan, and there are hopes that this political transformation will materialise into more freedoms, especially press freedoms.

However there are still fears. Ironically the political openness which experts think was triggered by a small-scale but nonetheless, sustained protest movement, bred dissent not only towards the government, but towards the NISS, an apparatus known for being ruthless.

“With calls to limit the powers and functions of NISS especially on the press, the state has to find another way to control the press,” said Al-Amin in an attempt to understand the timing of the press laws.

Releasing political detainees, advocating for a more comprehensive political and constitution-making process are seen in a positive light by journalists, but there are sincere hopes to free the press and free journalists from censorship in the near future.

Published @- http://www.dc4mf.org/en/content/new-press-law-violations-and-restrictions-or-transformation-and-freedom

The soul of Khartoum

Published @- http://www.opendemocracy.net/reem-abbas/soul-of-khartoum

The Governor of Khartoum, Abdel-Rahman Al-Khider has been determined to “civilize” Khartoum in the past few months. The idea seemed well-intentioned in the beginning .

Tea ladies are women who sell flavoured tea and coffee on the pavements. Their customers sit around them on stools usually under the shade of a tree in any street in Khartoum.

It is a breezy morning and being the Sudanese person you are, you crave a cup of tea. You turn to your right hand-side, you see a tea-lady and you begin walking her way. You take one Sudanese pound worth of Legimat (Zalabaya) and a cup of tea ‘with medicine’, the Sudanese word for tea spices such as cinnamon, ginger, cardamom. You are enjoying the delicious snack and you get up from the short stool and head to the tea-lady to pay her for the delicious snack. She is no longer there.

You stand there in utter shock: but she was just there. Your curiosity drives you to take a right into a side-street and you find her sitting at the end of the street, with stools around her and customers sitting there enjoying their cup of tea. You pay her only after asking, what happened?

“There was a police sweep coming our away, we are not allowed to be on main streets anymore,” she tells you. The Governor of Khartoum, Abdel-Rahman Al-Khider has been determined to “civilize” Khartoum in the past few months. The idea seemed well-intentioned in the beginning, a wider four-laned Nile street, a beautiful corniche for walking, cleaner streets and more greenery.

The state government saw the need to civilize Khartoum by civilizing its people. The police raids on men who wash cars on main streets began: they would get picked up or prevented from doing their work by the police. The governor said they are making the streets dirty and it looks uncivilized. In all honesty, they could be given serious tips on how to keep the surroundings clean when washing a car, but most importantly, you are denying a large number of youth the only income between them and living a life of crime. After all, we could all think of million things to do other than standing in the sun the whole day.

Then, we all turned to another job that is bringing an income to many families, especially families headed up by women. Tea ladies have become a part of our community, a “marginal” job at the centre of Sudanese life, whether for the civil servants or the unemployed youth and the underemployed journalists who keep a tab at their favorite tea ladies’ berth.

There is Sara*, a young tea-lady in West Omdurman who worked at some company, but left after being subjected to sexual harassment by her supervisor and now works as a tea lady. Or Helewa, who fought with the rebels, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) during the civil war and now makes a living making the best Zalabeya in Khartoum.

Last week, Helewa wasn’t there, she was harassed out of that spot she favoured for years, by the police.

I like the new greenery and the colorful benches on the side of Nile Street, but I also like Khartoum state with tea ladies on main streets and men selling peanuts and cold hibiscous juice by the side of the street.

After all, they are the soul of the city. 

Leave Nile Street Alone

Every day, thousands of people, especially youngsters, leave their house to sit on Nile Street, by the beautiful Nile river and drink tea, coffee and enjoy ready snacks at the open-air cafes catered for and run by tea ladies.

The Council of Islamic Scholars in Sudan have asked the governor of Khartoum to ban the venues they describe as "haphazard cafes" on Nile Street.

The Secretary-General of the CIS told the press that the cafes have become places for drug-dealing, debauchery and are a black spot in Khartoum: he added that they do not exist in neighbouring countries.

 

The CIS is basically talking about the place most frequented by families and youth. Every day, thousands of people, especially youngsters, leave their house to sit on Nile Street, by the beautiful Nile river and drink tea, coffee and enjoy ready snacks at the open-air cafes catered for and run by tea ladies.

The tea ladies, women who sell ginger coffee and cinnamon-flavoured tea, line the space around them with plastic chairs and tables to attract clients, although the smell of coffee is sufficient to attract most clients.

 

Nile Street has become an icon for many in Sudan. It is a place to make money as it’s now a business place for hundreds of tea ladies and men who make a living selling gum, cotton candy, soft drinks and phone credit among other things. It is also a place for entertainment, where people don't have to pay an entry fee and spend a hefty amount on a meal, especially in this tough economic situation.

It is a place for youth to hold cultural events in the open-air spaces and a place for young lovers to get to know each other.

 

Weeks ago, rumours started surfacing in Khartoum that the government is pushing for a Nile Street for families only, in other words, the hordes of young men going there after work will be segregated out into specific areas.

Then, yesterday, the CIS, the largest body of Muslim scholars makes this statement and raises more fear of a crackdown on the only affordable and the favorite venue for entertainment us all.

The harassment has already started in my opinion, if you were willing to read the signs. Recently a lawyer and her daughters were picked up by the public order police for "indecent" clothing during a quiet family evening on Nile Street.

 

A little over a month ago, two friends of mine, a boy and a girl had their evening ruined by a security officer who wanted a bribe for not arresting them. They were sitting facing the river on Nile Street in Omdurman and talking when the officer appeared.

If the government decides to restrict the cafes and activities on Nile Street, this will not be met with total apathy. People will not allow the silence in the early 1990s when cinemas and cultural institutes were closed down to be repeated. People need space to breath and it will surely be difficult to take this away from them.

 

I know a young man who lost his job three years ago and never succeeded in finding a job in the same field, engineering. He was stuck doing menial jobs and was thoroughly depressed and miserable because he was not able to support his wife. Every day, he would leave his house after 7pm to go to Nile Street and enjoy an evening with his friends. When his wife complained, he told her it was his therapy, the only place to escape the disappointments he is facing, the only place.

 

Taking away Nile Street from us will be beyond a disappointment: it will be inhumane.

Sudan-South Sudan Economic Conference convened in Berlin

KHARTOUM - The Sudan-South Sudan Economic Conference took place in Berlin on Tuesday, January 29, with Germany pledging that economic development would safeguard against conflict and radicalism.

KHARTOUM - The Sudan-South Sudan Economic Conference took place in Berlin on Tuesday, January 29, with Germany pledging that economic development would safeguard against conflict and radicalism.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Westerwelle (left), his Sudanese counterpart Karti and South Sudan’s Ambassador to Germany Osman, during the trilateral economic conference.
© The Niles | Nik Lehnert

Initially scheduled for last October, the conference was postponed when protestors stormed the German embassy in Khartoum following a Youtube film by an American film that mocked Islam.

At the official opening German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle outlined German hopes that the conference would help Sudan and South Sudan “along the path toward peace”.

The conference would help Sudan and South Sudan “along the path toward peace”.
Guido WesterwelleSpeaking to some 300 attendees he said that economic development was key to obtaining stability in the volatile region, adding that poverty feeds extremism and hate.

Sudanese and international human rights activists, however, voiced opposition to the meeting.

Ahead of the gathering activists railed against Germany for hosting the event. Act for Sudan, a coalition of Sudanese and US activists and organisations protested the conference, circulating a letter signed by 64 international organisations as well as human rights advocates including the US Department of State 2012 Recipient of the International Women of Courage Award, Hawa Abdallah Salih.

The letter called on Foreign Minister Westerwelle to “cancel this conference that places Germany squarely in the role of generating financial support for the genocidal Sudanese regime”.

Germany is among the few Western countries with good links to Sudan. The nation, which operates under a US trade embargo, is trying to attract more investment to help its ailing economy, which lost its oil income to South Sudan when its neighbour became a separate nation in 2011.
The Berlin conference was attended by South Sudanese representatives, who are also hopeful for business with Western firms to halt the country’s economic downward spiral.

According to the letter, the signatories are concerned about the human rights violations in South Kordofan, Blue Nile, Darfur and the East and they fear the conference will “help to fund more atrocities against civilians”.

During his speech, Westerwelle stressed that Germany would push for peace in the conflictive regions including Darfur, the Nuba Mountains and Jonglei.

Speaking to the Niles, Susan Morgan from Act for Sudan argued that financial support to the Sudanese regime should not occur until attacks on civilians stop and there is humanitarian access across Sudan.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle and his Sudanese counterpart Ali Karti, minutes before the official opening of the trilateral economic conference between Germany, Sudan and South Sudan on January 29.
© The Niles | Nik LehnertThere should be “a clear demonstration of progress on all remaining issues, including an inclusive constitutional review process followed by free and fair elections,” she said.

The letter was signed by activists from Iraq, Uganda, Austria, Greece, the UK, Italy, the US, Niger as well as Sudanese activists.

In March 2012, a Sudan investment conference to be held in Turkey was cancelled as the US and other powerful countries signalled that they would not attend due to Sudan’s ongoing conflicts.

Girifna, a pro-democracy Sudanese group wrote an open letter to Germany on its website asking the host to “put people before profit”.

The letter states that the Sudanese government is implicated in conflicts, an attack on civil society organisations as well as a crackdown on independent media outlets and peaceful protest movements.

Mai Shutta, a Sudanese activist based in Germany organised a press conference and a march against the conference with German and Sudanese activists.

“Money does not solve Sudan's political problems, it helps supports conflicts and displacement,” said Shutta in an email interview.

Business however is struggling in Sudan, which recorded a budget deficit of 10 billion Sudanese pounds this year. The country’s economy witnessed a steep economic slide since South Sudan’s independence in July 2011 when Sudan lost 75 percent of its oil revenues.

Sudan hopes to attract investment from Germany and other European countries to ease its debt mountain which stands at $46 billion, making it difficult to borrow money.

The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement- North Sudan Faction (SPLM-N) was the first group to call for the cancellation of the conference. Its Secretary-General, Yasir Arman, asked Germany to “assume its responsibility in putting an end to genocide, protecting civilians and ending the war,” in a statement issued last week.

Published @http://www.theniles.org/articles/?id=1666

Story of a Journalist

He is in his 20s and has been working in journalism since 2010, freelancing for a number of newspapers for free because as he puts it "I want to write and be productive even without pay"and working for other newspapers.

He worked at a newspaper writing excellent investigative articles on human rights and the political situation. 

Writing in a notebook at night and using the computer at the newspaper because he could not afford a laptop... he was making 300 Sudanese pounds a month after all.

He endured being summoned by the security services for his articles and was threatened with detention and being stopped from writing.

He was arrested during Sudan Revolts by security officers, beaten and his belongings were stolen.

He is one of the best journalists I've seen and I loved reading his articles. He is now working in the construction industry, transporting bricks and sand...building houses. He is trying to support himself and his family.

Proposed Sudan Media Law Targets Press Freedom

First published:

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/01/sudan-press-freedom.html#ixzz2IM1zhs00

KHARTOUM, Sudan — A few weeks ago, a mysterious document appeared at the national assembly, the Sudanese parliament. It was a draft for a press law, put together by a body which has yet to reveal its identity.

Normally, such a document should be submitted to the political sector of the National Congress Party (NCP) — the ruling party of Sudan — which verifies the bill and hands it to the national assembly after consultations with the Press Council, the Journalist’s Union and the media in general.

The document made its own way to the national assembly, to the dismay of journalists who were shocked to find the new laws were more repressive than the 2009 press law, which were then dubbed the "worst press law in Sudan's history."

Afaf Tawor, who represents the media committee in parliament, told journalists on Dec. 1 that the new laws "have penalties including fines for journalists, suspending a journalist from writing for up to two months, suspending an editor-in-chief from work and confiscating press cards from both."

The new press laws legalize closing a newspaper or a press center, as well as cancelling the registration of a publishing house. The laws also subject newspapers and other media institutions to financial penalties.

Hussein Saad, the media coordinator for the Sudanese Council for Defending Rights and Freedoms — an independent body of human rights defenders, lawyers and politicians — told Al-Monitor that the Sudanese press is already going through a difficult time and if the press laws profiled by Tawor are approved, it will be a disaster.

"The margin for freedom of expression has become nearly nonexistent, and the Sudanese press is already subjected to pre-publication censorship; newspapers are closed and confiscated. Closures and court cases against journalists have become common,” said Saad, once a journalist at the now-suspended Ahjras Al-Hurriya and Al-Midan newspapers.

The 2009 press laws were passed by parliament even though journalists objected and held silent protests and submitted petitions. The laws gave the state more control over the press and the state-run Council for Press and Publications more power to suspend newspapers and control the registration of press companies.

Mahjoub Mohamed Saeih, the godfather of the Sudanese press and founder of Al-Ayam, one of the oldest newspapers in Sudan, said that he does not understand how such laws could be passed if they did not come through the normal legal process.

"The Press Council and the Journalist's Union said that they did not submit these laws; it is from an unknown source. This is unacceptable, and they should be drafted through the usual process," said Saleh in a phone interview.

Saleh added that if these restrictive laws are passed, it will be dangerous to the future of democracy and freedom of expression in Sudan.

Mohy Al-Deen Titawy, the president of the Journalist's Union, rejected the new laws as the worst press laws since 1990 and stressed that the bill was not drafted by journalists or media professionals.

A committee including Titawy was formed to amend the press laws based on the recommendations by the Journalist's Union and the NCP, which will then present a bill to journalists and editors for further discussion before submitting it to the national assembly.

The 2009 press laws, as problematic as they were for press freedom, had fewer restrictions. They gave the Press Council the power to freeze a newspaper for three days for not abiding by journalistic ethics, whereas the new press laws bring this up to ten days, which could add financial strain on newspapers.

Additionally, the 2009 laws state that the editor-in-chief is responsible as the main party in any court case against a newspaper. The new bill, however, places the responsibility at the feet of journalists, the editor-in-chief, the printing house and the company under which the newspaper is registered.

"This could turn the printing house, which has no say in the editorial policy of the newspaper, into a censoring body, as they could refuse to print my newspaper since closure is a great financial burden they cannot afford," said Idris Al-Douma, the editor-in-chief of Al-Jareeda, one of Sudan's best-selling independent newspapers.

Al-Douma believes that this draft was leaked to test the reaction of the journalists, the press council and the union.

"Our reaction was anger since the new press laws will restrict press freedoms and halt the development of the press in Sudan," said Al-Douma in an interview with Al-Monitor.

Since 2009, the main body responsible for taking action against newspapers and journalists was the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS), which forcibly shut down more than five newspapers, conducted pre-publication censorship, confiscated issues from the printing house before distribution and took more than 10 journalists to court.

The NISS is permitted to take action against any newspaper viewed as a threat to national security under the controversial National Security Act.

"The actions of NISS reflected negatively on the government and these new press laws are, in my opinion, an attempt to legalize NISS's actions by shifting them to the functions of the press council," said Al-Douma, whose newspaper was suspended for three months in 2011.

Al-Douma fears that the press laws will be passed by the national assembly in its April session.

"The ruling party has a majority of seats in parliament, and they are very keen on staying in power. The press is an impediment to that," said Al-Douma.

Abdel-Gadir Mohamed, a press-freedom advocate and author of a book on the freedom of the press in Sudan, is also not optimistic about the future.

"Last week, the president hired his vice president, Nafie Ali Nafie, and the chief of NISS in the higher council for media policies, which is more worrying than the press laws," Mohamed told Al-Monitor.

In the meantime, journalists are waiting impatiently for the draft to be discussed by the Press Council and the union, and their recommendations to the press laws.