At least 30 female journalists drawn from over eight states of South Sudan converged in Juba to share their personal stories and the challenges they face while performing their journalistic duties in their various stations across the country.

The female journalists seized this rare opportunity to tell their personal stories as some of them spoke out against rigid editors who practice sexism and ageism while assigning roles to reporters in their daily morning editorial meetings.

A female journalist who preferred to be treated anonymously said at her community radio station, female journalists face rampant sexism and ageism during the assignment of roles. She also said they face sexual harassment prompting some of her colleagues to leave journalism.

“We are always assigned to cover soft story ideas,” a 25-year-old female journalist said. “Our editor used a segregating language that women cannot be assigned to cover hard stories. I consider this sexism. Sometimes, they also say I am too young to cover hard stories, this is ageism. Despite my skills and experience, I have been pressed down because of my age and gender. We have been perceived as weak gender and can’t be entrusted to cover hard political stories. We have also experienced sexual harassment when assigned to go to the field. It is not fair to look at us as sexual objects. FJN should find a way to investigate this,” she lamented.

Halima Gladys, a female journalist working for Voice of Freedom Radio in Magwi County, said some government officials looked down on some younger female journalists and preferred to be interviewed by male journalists, a matter she said hurt her in her career as a young female journalist.

“Government officials prefer to be interviewed by male journalists,” Gladys said. “I don’t know what is the problem with female journalists. As long as all of us are journalists, women also have a right to interview senior public figures. Female journalists should be given access to interview senior government officials, why not! We are trying to adapt to this situation but we appeal to Female Journalists Network to intensify its advocacy drive to change the narrative. We need equal rights in the media,” Gladys affirmed.

She appealed to FJN to set up clear plans that could help the female journalists cover the anticipated general elections effectively without hindrance.

In 2019, two female journalists were reportedly physically assaulted by an army officer while covering a news event at the SSPDF [South Sudan People’s Defence Forces] General Headquarters, in Bilpam, north of Juba city.

The incident attracted wide condemnation from the public and media advocacy organizations triggering an apology from the SSPDF leadership.

The army said in a statement, “It regretted the attack on two female reporters by its senior general.”

Ayen Achol Deng, a female journalist participating in the same event organized by FJN (the brainchild of AMDISS) which is supported by the Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) attributed such inappropriate behaviors being practiced by some government officials to the impact of prolonged civil wars in the country, she went on to say, the cultures of South Sudanese do not encourage violence against women.

She, however, noted that some media managers tend to abuse their authority to subject female employees to sexism, ageism, and other negative gender vices such as sexual harassment that do not promote equal participation in nation-building. She advised women to identify allies to help improve their situation by strengthening policies and rules that disallow hate speech, sexual exploitation, and gender discrimination in society.

“It is very challenging for media practitioners especially women working for radio stations, magazines, and newspapers. Sometimes, male editors do not take female journalists seriously. The editors don’t trust that female journalists can go to military barracks to interview army generals. We have only very few female journalists who have defied this negative vice, for example, Maura Ajak who sometimes goes to cover hard stories at the army general headquarters. We are hoping to see change when FJN continues to do gender mainstreaming stories that create awareness. Change takes time but it is imminent,” Ayen said.

Aquilina Adhel, a female journalist in Northern Bahr-al-Ghazal State praised the people of her state for respecting female journalists, and on the other note, she lambasts some politicians for interfering with the media rights in her state.

“The people of Northern Bahr-al-Ghazal State respect female journalists. We have support from our community. Sometimes, when our radio goes off-air, they become concerned because it is the main source of information for them. But politicians are trying to interfere with media freedom,” Adhel stressed. “We are being censored by some politicians in the state. They feel unhappy when we play statements of other political leaders who are not from their party. They should understand the essence of the multiparty system where we are now. Media is an independent entity and it should not be disturbed” she added.

Stella Senya Santino, a female journalist in Yei River County said female journalists suffer challenges on a daily basis from rigid bosses who could be editors or station managers. She appealed to FJN to double its efforts to address these challenges ahead of the general elections next year.

“Some male station managers and editors don’t trust female journalists,” Senya said.“It is a challenge. Sometimes we have the zeal to take on hard stories but our craving for hard stories has been hindered even by some government officials. They think we are too young to report on hard stories. I am here in Juba to brainstorm solutions to these challenges,” she added.

At the closing ceremony, the Chairperson of the Female Journalists Network, Ms. Irene Ayaa Lokang said through sharing of experience, the members noted that sexual harassment of female journalists still exists and called for swift investigation into the claims.

“The members noted that the sexual harassment of female journalists is still a reality both in workplaces and in the field. The leadership of the FJN condemned in the strongest terms this fresh act of sexual harassment of female journalists by individuals within the media fraternity,” Ayaa said.

This rare General Meeting of the FJN was supported by the Norwegian People’s Aid [NPA]. The FJN members thanked the government, Media Authority, Access to Information Commission, and National Communication Authority for supporting their activities and appealed for continued support and collaboration.

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South Sudanese authorities should immediately and unconditionally release all journalists detained this week and ensure the press can work freely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday.

On Tuesday, January 3, agents with the National Security Service detained six journalists with the state-run South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SSBC), according to multiple media reports and three people familiar with the arrests who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation.

The journalists are under investigation for allegedly leaking a video clip widely circulated on social media in December, which appeared to show the country’s president urinating on himself, those reports said. SSBC did not air that footage, an official from the broadcaster told the independent outlet Radio Tamazuj.

“Authorities’ arrests of six employees of the South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation matches a pattern of security personnel resorting to arbitrary detention whenever officials deem coverage unfavorable,” said CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative, Muthoki Mumo. “Authorities should unconditionally release these six SSBC employees and ensure that they can work without further intimidation or threat of arrest.”

Those detained are control room director Joval Tombe, camera operator and technician Victor Lado, camera operators Joseph Oliver and Jacob Benjamin, camera operator and technician Mustafa Osman, and control room technician Cherbek Ruben, according to the media reports and the people who spoke to CPJ.

As of Friday evening, the six remained in detention at the National Security Service headquarters, known as Blue House, according to those sources and a statement by the Union of Journalists of South Sudan.

CPJ called and texted South Sudan Information Minister Michael Makuei for comment on Friday evening, but did not immediately receive any replies. He told the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Voice of America that people should wait to learn why the journalists were detained.

When CPJ called Elijah Alier, managing director of South Sudan’s Media Authority, a statutory regulator, he declined to comment, saying he was out of office.

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South Sudanese authorities should cease harassing and threatening journalists for their work covering the country’s parliament, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday.

At about 10 a.m. on Tuesday, February 22, officers with the country’s National Security Service intelligence agency arrested eight journalists on the grounds of the parliament in Juba, the capital, according to news reports, CPJ interviews with several of those journalists, and Patrick Oyet, president of the Union of Journalists of South Sudan, a local trade group, who spoke to CPJ over the phone.

The reporters were covering a press conference that included members of opposition parties when a group of NSS officers halted the briefing on the grounds that it was illegal, seized the journalists’ recording devices, and took them to the parliament’s security office, according to those sources.

The detained journalists included reporters for the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Voice of America, The City Review newspaper, Radio Bakhita, Eye Radio, The Insider South Sudan news website, No. 1 Citizen newspaper, and Radio Miraya, according to Oyet and the journalists who spoke with CPJ, who said they were held for about three hours and then released without charge.

“Authorities in South Sudan should focus on ensuring that journalists can effectively cover their nation’s politics, instead of detaining them for doing their jobs,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator. “Security forces’ harassment and threats toward journalists who sought to cover an event at the country’s legislature show how far authorities are willing to go to control the public discourse.”

Voice of America reporter Winnie Cirino told CPJ that the NSS officers detained her and the other journalists minutes after the press conference began. The Insider South Sudan managing editor David Mono Danga, who also works as a reporter for Voice of America, told CPJ that he believed they were detained because they were covering an event held by opposition politicians.

The press conference sought to address the intimidation of journalists and opposition lawmakers, as well as alleged government mismanagement, according to a press release by the members of parliament who held the conference, which CPJ reviewed.

The NSS officers “decided to put the whole thing on us, the journalists,” The City Review reporter Keji Janefer told CPJ. “They insisted it was our fault.”

At the parliament’s security office, NSS officers attempted to question each journalist individually, but the reporters refused and said they should remain as a group; the officers then accused them of violating the rules concerning coverage of the legislature, The City Review reporter Sheila Ponnie told CPJ.

After about an hour, the officers took the journalists by bus to an NSS office on Bilpam Road, also in Juba, Ponnie said.

Cirino told CPJ that agents held the journalists in a group at that office, seized their phones, and then locked them in a room inside the building, where an officer lectured them on how they should conduct their work.

After an hour, the NSS officers released the journalists without charge and returned their recorders and phones, but told them to delete any recordings of the press conference and threatened that, if the journalists’ outlets published stories covering the conference, the officers would hold them personally responsible, Cirino and Ponnie said.

“That was a serious threat to our lives,” Danga said. “That is a threat to my life and my family.”

Keji said it was “very bad when security personnel start marking you, given the environment we are operating in.”

South Sudan ranked fourth on CPJ’s 2021 Impunity Index, which calculates the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of a country’s population.

Cirino, Danga, and Keji added that they were concerned about the security of information on their phones, as NSS officers had taken them out of their sight during their detention. CPJ has documented how digital forensics technology can be used to extract contacts and other information from journalists’ devices.

Cirino told CPJ that, while they were at the parliament security office, the reporters communicated with Oyet and other journalists, who raised public awareness about the detentions on social media. Cirino and Keji said she believed that awareness and Oyet’s intervention at the Bilpam Road office helped secure their release without charge.

Separately, Ponnie told CPJ that NSS officers at the parliament stopped her while she was working last week, ordered her to hand over her phone and, after she refused, forced her to delete recordings she had made.

When CPJ called NSS Internal Security Bureau Director of Public Relations David John Kumuri for comment, he said he would call back after 30 minutes, but failed to do so. CPJ repeatedly called him back but he did not answer.

Parliamentary spokesperson John Agany Deng told CPJ in a phone interview that the February 22 press conference was “basically illegal” and denied that the journalists had been “arrested,” before the call quality became too poor to understand him; he did not answer subsequent calls from CPJ.

In broadcast media interviews this week, he defended NSS officers’ actions and alleged that the press conference was illegal and proper media procedures were not followed.

CPJ also called Elijah Alier, the managing director of South Sudan’s media authority, and Sapana Abuyi, the authority’s director-general for information and media compliance, but the calls did not go through.

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South Sudan has enacted the Cybercrimes and Computer Misuse Provisional Order 2021 aimed to combat  cybercrimes. The country has a fast-evolving technology sector, with three mobile operators and 24 licensed internet service providers. Investments in infrastructure development have propelled internet penetration to 16.8% and mobile phone penetration to 23% of the country’s population of 11.3 million people, which necessitates a law to curb cybercrime.

The Order is based on article 86(1) of the Transitional Constitution of South Sudan 2011, which provides that when parliament is not in session, the president can issue a provisional order that has the force of law in urgent matters.

The Cybercrimes and Computer Misuse Order makes strides in addressing cybercrimes by extending the scope of jurisdiction in prosecuting cybercrimes to cover offences committed in or outside the country against citizens and the South Sudan state. The Order also establishes judicial oversight especially over the use of forensic tools to collect evidence, with section 10 requiring authorisation by a competent court prior to collecting such evidence. Furthermore, the Order attempts to protect children against child pornography (section 23 and 24), and provides for prevention of trafficking in persons (section 30) and drugs (section 31).

However, the Order is largely regressive of citizens’ rights including freedom of expression, access to information, and the right to privacy.

The Order gives overly broad definitions, including “computer misuse,” “indecent content,” “pornography,” and “publish” which are so ambiguous and wide in scope that they could be used by the state to target government opponents, dissidents and critics. The definitions largely limit the use of electronic gadgets and curtail the exercise of freedom of expression and access to information.

Article 22 of the Transitional Constitution of South Sudan 2011 guarantees the right to privacy. The country has ratified the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) that provides for the right to privacy under article 17 and the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights, whose article 5 provides for the right to respect one’s dignity, which includes the right to privacy. The Order appears to contravene these instruments by threatening individual privacy.

Despite a commendable provision in section 6 imposing an obligation on service providers to store information relating to communications, including personal data and traffic data of subscribers, for 180 days – a period far shorter compared to other countries – personal data is still potentially at risk. The section requires service providers and their agents to put in place technical capabilities to enable law enforcement agencies monitor compliance with the Order. With no specific data protection law in South Sudan and without making a commitment to the leading regional instrument, the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection, privacy of the citizens is at stake.

The section on offences and penalties lacks specificity on fines which may be levied on errant individuals or companies. On the other hand, some of the offences provided for under the Order potentially curtail freedom of expression and the right to information. For instance, the offence of spamming under section 21 could be interpreted to include all communications through online platforms, including social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp. Under the provision, virtually all individuals who forward messages on social media stand the risk of prosecution. This also has a chilling effect on freedom of expression and the right to information.

The offence of offensive communication under section 25 potentially has a chilling effect on freedom of expression, media freedom and access to information. A similar provision under section 25 of the Computer Misuse Act, 2011 of Uganda has been widely misused to persecute, prosecute and silence political critics and dissidents. Section 25 of the South Sudan Cybercrimes Order could be used in a similar manner to target government critics and dissidents. 

In CIPESA’s analysis of the Order, we call for specific actions that could ensure the prevention of cybercrime while at the same time not hurting online rights and freedoms, including:

• Deletion of problematic definitions or provisions from the Order.
• Enactment of a specific data protection law to guarantee the protection of data of individuals.
• Urgent drafting of rules and regulations to prescribe the procedures for implementing the Order.
• Ratification of the African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection.
• Service providers should not be compelled to disclose their subscribers’ information to law enforcement agencies except on the basis of a court order.
• Amendment of the Order to emphasise the oversight role of courts during the processes of access, inspection, seizure, collection and preservation of data or tracking of data under section 9.

Read the full analysis here.

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Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns an increase in the harassment of journalists and media outlets in South Sudan, amid civil society calls for the resignation of President Salva Kiir and Vice-President Riek Machar.

The targets include Radio Jonglei, which has not broadcast since 27 August, when security officials raided the station, closed it down, briefly detained three of his journalists – Matuor Mabior Anyang, Ayuen Garang Kur and Deng Gai Deng – and confiscated their mobile phones.

The official reason for the raid was to prevent the station from continuing to broadcast because its journalists were suspected of sympathising with the People’s Coalition for Civil Action (PCCA) and were accused of broadcasting a call for a protest that was supposed to have taken place on 30 August.

The radio station’s director told RSF that, in the days prior to the raid, he received several calls from security officials summoning him to a meeting and ordering him to stop covering political stories.

The raid on Radio Jonglei is the latest in a series of reprisals against journalists since the start of July, when Alfred Angasi, a news presenter with the state-owned South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SSBC), was arrested and held arbitrarily for more than two weeks for refusing to read part of a presidential decree during a news programme.

Al Jazeera reporter Ajou Luol was briefly detained as a result of an argument with security agents when President Kiir gave a speech at the opening of parliament on 30 August. Two other journalists who were present at the time, Maura Ajak and Yom Manas, were threatened and roughed up, and their equipment was seized, when they tried to boycott the session in protest against Luol’s detention.

“The wave of arrests and threats against journalists in recent weeks is worrying,” said Arnaud Froger, the head of RSF’s Africa desk. “The undisguised hostility of the authorities towards the media highlights how difficult it is for journalists to cover politics in South Sudan, where at least ten have been killed since 2014. We call for an immediate end to the harassment of South Sudanese reporters and media.”

Online news and information are meanwhile closely monitored and even censored. Internet access was cut throughout the country on 30 August, the day of the planned anti-government protest, which the armed forces prevented from taking place. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a media director told RSF he was fined the equivalent of several thousand euros a few weeks ago for posting videos on Facebook that the authorities regarded as “malicious.”

South Sudan is ranked 139th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index.

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South Sudanese authorities should immediately release journalist Alfred Angasi and cease arbitrarily detaining members of the press, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.On July 5, intelligence officials in Juba, the capital, arrested Angasi, a radio presenter at the state-owned South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SSBC), according to his sister Cecelia Dominic, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

Dominic told CPJ she and other members of the journalist’s family went to the SSBC office a few days after Angasi’s detention, and said that employees there told them that Angasi was in the custody of the National Security Service, South Sudan’s intelligence service, at its headquarters in Juba, known as the Blue House.

Authorities have not allowed Angasi to access his family or lawyer, and have not charged him with any crime, according to Dominic and Patrick Oyet, the president of the Union of Journalists of South Sudan, who also spoke to CPJ via messaging app. However, Oyet told CPJ that he and two other officials from the union were allowed to visit Angasi at the Blue House today.

Dominic told CPJ that Angasi was recovering from tuberculosis, and that his family was worried for his health. Oyet told CPJ that the journalist seemed physically well today.

“South Sudanese authorities’ detention of journalist Alfred Angasi for nearly three weeks, without charging him with any crime, sends a threatening message to media workers in the country and demonstrates a cruel disregard for the journalist’s health,” said CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative, Muthoki Mumo. “Authorities must release Angasi immediately, and security personnel must stop retaliating against journalists for their work and editorial stances.”

Authorities previously arrested Angasi at the SSBC offices on July 3, held him overnight at the Blue House, and released him without charge the following day but directed him to report back on July 5, according to Dominic and news reports.

On July 4, Angasi told Dominic that his detention followed a disagreement at SSBC over his refusal to read a news item, she told CPJ, adding that Angasi did not specify the news item. Angasi told her that the disagreement took place a few days before his arrest in the afternoon of July 3, Dominic said.

However, Oyet and a Juba-based journalist told CPJ that Angasi had refused to read a news broadcast following SBCC’s airing of a presidential announcement on the evening of July 3. Oyet and the journalist, who spoke to Angasi on July 4 and asked CPJ not to name them for safety concerns, said authorities detained Angasi shortly after he refused to read that news broadcast. Today, officers at the Blue House told the union officials who visited Angasi that they were still investigating the journalist’s motive for refusing to read the news, according to Oyet.

In a statement, the journalists’ union said that such an issue should have been “an internal administrative” matter at the SSBC and demanded that authorities produce Angasi in court if he was suspected of a crime.

Oyet told CPJ that the Union of Journalists of South Sudan sent a lawyer to the Blue House on July 20, and while authorities did not allow the lawyer to meet with Angasi, they said the journalist would be released soon.

When CPJ called SSBC Managing Director James Magok Chilim for comment, he denied that Angasi was a journalist, and said he was a primary school teacher. Chilim refused to answer further questions from CPJ, and the call ended due to poor connectivity. When CPJ called back, a call via messaging app did not connect and phone calls were answered by an automated message indicating that the phone was switched off. Chilim did not respond to messages sent via messaging app.

Dominic told CPJ that Angasi has been a state media journalist for almost a decade, and multiple media reports about Angasi’s detention, as well as the journalist union’s statement, also identified him as a journalist. Chilim also spoke about Angasi’s case with the Independent broadcaster Radio Tamazuj, and said the journalist ought to have been freed on July 15, but that delays were probably because of unspecified investigations.

CPJ repeatedly called Information Minister Michael Makuei Lueth, who also responds on behalf of the National Security Service, and Elijah Alier Kuai, the managing director of the Media Authority statutory regulator, but the calls did not connect. CPJ also sent a message to the Facebook account of South Sudan’s president’s office, but did immediately receive any response.

In 2020, the National Security Service arrested at least two journalists – Bullen Alexander Bala, a reporter with the private newspaper Juba Monitor, and Jackson Ochaya of the No. 1 Citizen newspaper – as CPJ documented at the time.

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South Sudanese authorities should immediately release journalists Zechariah Makuach Maror and Jackson Ochaya and halt all acts of intimidation against the press, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

On September 1, Ochaya, a reporter with the privately owned No. 1 Citizen newspaper, went missing and was later confirmed to be held at South Sudan’s National Security Service headquarters, according to media reports.

On September 14, Maror, a freelance journalist, was sentenced by a Juba county court to one year in prison and a fine of 5,000 South Sudanese pounds ($38) after being convicted of criminal defamation, according to news reports, court documents reviewed by CPJ, and the journalist’s brother, Saad Z. Maror, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.

“South Sudan has one of the most hostile environments in the world for the press, and the continued arrest and harassment of journalists indicates that authorities are not committed to changing these conditions,” said Angela Quintal, CPJ’s Africa program coordinator. “Zechariah Makuach Maror should not be behind bars, and the detention of Jackson Ochaya is yet another example of authorities’ willingness to spread fear instead of ensuring journalists’ safety.”

In an August 25 report for No. 1 Citizen, Ochaya included a comment from a spokesperson of the National Salvation Front, a militant group fighting South Sudan’s government, according to media reports and an individual with knowledge of the arrest, who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. The report was titled, “Army Accuse NAS of Illegal Gold Mining, NAS Denies,” according to a copy of the paper’s front page reviewed by CPJ.

On August 31, authorities summoned Ochaya and No. 1 Citizen’s management over that report, and released them the same day, according to those reports. Ochaya went missing the following day after receiving a call to meet his uncle, according to those reports.

On September 9, No.1 Citizen published a statement asserting that Ochaya was not arrested for a “journalistic offense,” but in connection with a “personal matter,” according to a copy of the statement published in local news reports.

Ochaya is detained at the National Security Service headquarters, and no charges have been filed in his case and no court dates set, according to two people with knowledge of his case who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

On September 8, David Mono Danga, managing editor of the privately owned The Insider South Sudan news website and a reporter with the U.S.-Congress funded broadcaster Voice of America, was summoned by the country’s media regulator, where an official advised him not to report on Ochaya’s arrest because it allegedly was not connected to his journalism, Danga told CPJ via messaging app.

Danga said he suspects that the summons may have been partly in response to his earlier advocacy for Ochaya in a WhatsApp group of South Sudanese journalists that he believes also included members of the media authority.

“An attack on one journalist is an attack on all of us… We have to watch each other’s back,” Danga wrote in a message to the group, which CPJ reviewed.

Separately, police arrested Maror on April 18, 2020, and held him for three days following a defamation complaint filed by Salvatore Garang Mabiordit Wol, then South Sudan’s finance minister and the subject of criticism in Maror’s reporting, according to the journalist’s brother, court documents reviewed by CPJ, and Kuel Maluil Jok, chairman of local outlet Agamlong’s board, who spoke to CPJ over the phone.

Maror contributed freelance reporting to various privately owned newspapers in South Sudan, including Agamlong, The Dawn, and Juba Monitor, according to Jok and Saad Z. Maror. Maror also published criticism of South Sudan’s government on his Facebook page, which has over 700 followers.

Maror was free from April until September 14, when a Juba court issued its ruling and ordered him to be held in the city’s central prison, according to his brother.

During his trial in May, Maror’s lawyer denied the allegations against the journalist and argued that such cases should be handled under the country’s media law, not its penal code, according to the journalist’s brother, news reports, and court documents reviewed by CPJ.

Garang was fired from his position as finance minister on September 16, with the country’s president citing ongoing economic challenges and corruption, according to news reports. CPJ called Garang for comment but the call did not connect.

Saad Z. Maror told CPJ that his brother had a cough and pains in his back, stomach, and chest, which worsened in detention, but he had received treatment at a clinic and tested negative for COVID-19.

CPJ called Elijah Alier, the chairperson of South Sudan’s media authority, and Sapana Abuyi, the authority’s director general for information and media compliance, but the calls did not go through. CPJ also called Information Minister Michael Makuei Lueth, who responds on behalf of the National Security Service for comment, but the call did not connect.

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South Sudanese authorities should immediately release a journalist who has been arbitrarily detained, Human Rights Watch said today.

The National Security Service (NSS) arrested and detained Emmanuel Monychol Akop, the managing editor of The Dawn newspaper, after he answered a summons on October 21, 2019 to appear at the security service headquarters in Jebel neighborhood of Juba. Credible sources told Human Rights Watch that Monychol’s arrest appears to be linked to an October 15 Facebook post in which he poked fun at the dress worn by the foreign affairs and international cooperation minister, Awut Deng Achuil.

“Emmanuel Monychol’s detention is just the latest act of harassment by South Sudanese authorities in response to criticism or perceived dissent,” said Mausi Segun, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should immediately release him unless he has been charged with a recognizable offense.”

Four days after Monychol’s arrest, he was released on bail to attend the burial of a relative and other family functions. He responded to a second security service summons on November 4 and has been in custody ever since. On October 29, while out on bail, Monychol apologized to the minister for his comments on Facebook, which were also published by The Dawn newspaper the next day. Since 2017, the minister has had a defamation case in the high court in Juba against Monychol and The Dawn newspaper.

Monychol’s detention appears to be part of a broader crackdown by South Sudanese authorities to silence criticism by the media, nongovernmental groups, opposition parties, and National Assembly members. Since conflict broke out in South Sudan in December 2013, the NSS has spread a climate of fear and terror, targeting critics and perceived dissidents with arbitrary arrest and detention and torture and other ill-treatment. This has led to self-censorship in which human rights activists, journalists, critics of the government, and ordinary people no longer feel safe to speak freely and openly about topics deemed controversial.

The National Security Service Act (2015) grants the security agency sweeping powers to arrest, detain, conduct searches, and seize property. The law, however, requires the NSS to bring detainees before a magistrate or judge within 24 hours of their detention. Detainees under NSS detention are often kept in poor conditions including in congested cells with inadequate access to food, water, and medical care.

Human Rights Watch has repeatedly called on South Sudanese authorities to ensure that the NSS powers are limited to intelligence gathering, as envisioned by the Transitional Constitution of 2011, which mandates the agency to “focus on information gathering, analysis and to advice the relevant authorities.” Human Rights Watch has recommended that the powers to arrest, detain, conduct searches, seize property, and use force be excluded from the agency’s authority, and should instead be exercised by an appropriate law enforcement agency.

South Sudan’s “revitalized” peace deal signed in September 2018 provides for the review of security sector laws including the NSS Act by the National Constitutional Amendment Committee. In January, this committee submitted proposed amendments to the NSS Act to the Justice Ministry for deliberations and for presentation before the National Assembly. The ministry has yet to transmit the amendments to the assembly.

“South Sudan’s authorities should expedite action on the necessary reforms to curb the security agency’s broad powers and ensure full compliance with existing legal safeguards,” Segun said. “They should also ensure broad-based, public, and transparent consultations during the review process.”

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Authorities in South Sudan should immediately release Michael Christopher, editor-in-chief of the Arabic-language daily Al-Watan, and halt its harassment of his publication, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Christopher was detained at the National Security Service headquarters in the capital Juba, on July 17, after responding to a summons, according to a report on the website of Eye Radio. On July 15, security services at the Juba airport briefly detained Christopher and seized his passport as he tried to fly to Nairobi, Kenya, according to a document seen by CPJ and the same Eye Radio report.

CPJ was unable to determine the reason for Christopher’s arrest, whether he has been charged with a crime, or whether he has been granted access to a lawyer.

On March 26, the South Sudan Media Authority suspended Al-Watan for alleged non-compliance with licensing requirements, according to a letter viewed by CPJ. The letter stipulated that Al-Watan must cease publication and journalistic activities until it complied with the requirements for license renewal.

CPJ could not determine the paper’s licensing status at the time of Christopher’s arrest. An individual familiar with the case, and who spoke with CPJ on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, told CPJ that Al-Watan has not published since receiving the suspension order.

“Jailing a journalist for more than three weeks for no reason is totally unacceptable, and Michael Christopher should be released immediately and unconditionally,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Angela Quintal. “We call on South Sudanese authorities to cease this long-standing campaign of harassment of Al-Watan newspaper and its editor.”

CPJ has documented how the media regulator barred Al-Watan in January from reporting on protests and how Christopher was arrested in 2016 for allegedly publishing an inaccurate report about the U.N. peacekeeping mission.

Eye Radio reported that on August 6, the media regulator told Mary Ajith, chairperson of the press rights group Association for Media Development in South Sudan, that the regulator did not know if Christopher’s arrest was connected to his work as a journalist.

CPJ today attempted to contact Elijah Alier and Sapana Abuyi, respectively the chairperson and director general for information and media compliance at South Sudan Media Authority, but the calls did not connect.

When CPJ called Minister of Information Michael Makuei Lueth on two occasions, the minster indicated that he was unable to hear clearly, before the line disconnected. Makuei did not immediately respond to a subsequent text message about Christopher’s case, sent today.

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