South Sudan journalist speaks out after illegal detention

Detained without charge for 18 days, tortured, and released
without explanation, South Sudanese journalist Peter Ngor plans to fight back.
"I am going to sue them [in] court. What they did to me was completely, utterly
wrong," said Ngor, the editor of a new, private, English-language daily called Destiny.

Still, Ngor believes that his illegal detention was the work
of a few individuals, and that ultimately, the world's newest country will
support freedom of the press. "There are powerful individuals who want to stop
the press for their own interests," he said.

On November 1, security agents arrested
Ngor and detained
him at the national security headquarters in the interim capital, Juba.
"The room was completely dark, you could not see anyone. The only way to
identify people was through touch," he said.

For the next 18 days, Ngor said, security agents tortured
him with repeated beatings. Someone walked on his back. They forced him to
stand for two days straight. "The cell was designed in such a way you could not
sit. I am now having trouble walking." He had no access to family or counsel.

Then he was mysteriously released.
"I assume they could not find anything to charge me with so they just released
me. I was detained illegally and released illegally." According to South
Sudan's constitution, a suspect cannot be detained over 24 hours without being
presented charges in court.

What prompted such hostility? Ngor's newspaper published an opinion
piece on October 26 criticizing the marriage of President Salva Kiir's
daughter to an Ethiopian national. Ngor's colleague Dengdit Ayok, who wrote the
piece, was detained
four days after Ngor was arrested. "They kept him in a separate cell in the
same security facility. I never saw him, but they treated him like they treated
me until we were released last week."

Ngor said he had not approved publication of the opinion
piece, and that he would have changed its language. Indeed, one can see how
Ayok's story could cause a stir - it accused the president of "staining his
patriotism" for allowing his daughter to marry a foreigner. As such, Destiny's editorial team wrote
an apology to the first family for the critical piece soon after its
publication, and suspended Ayok for one month.

Nonetheless, South Sudan National Security Services
suspended the publication upon Ngor's detention November 1, saying the paper
did not adhere to "the media code of conducts and professional ethics" and
instead "continued to publish illicit news that are inciting, personalities
invasion and defamation," news reports said.

On November 10, President Salva Kiir commented
on the matter, saying "media freedom should not be abused to the extent of
attacking personalities. In any case that will be defamation."

Defamation currently falls into a legal gray area in South
Sudan. Under a set of three proposed media laws, which would create a
self-regulatory media council, a public broadcaster, and provide greater access
to information, defamation cases would be handled through civil arbitration.
The bills, pending ratification since 2007, are allegedly under review by the Information
Ministry. (South Sudan became a semi-autonomous entity with a peace agreement
in 2005, allowing the interim government to initiate certain legal initiatives.)
Information Minister Benjamin Marial assured me in September during a visit
to Juba that the bills would be passed "soon."

Ngor believes his illegal detention and mistreatment may
have been avoided if the media laws had been in place. The chairman of the Association
of Media Development in South Sudan, an organization that has advocated for
their enactment, agrees. "Without the media laws we are like footballers
playing without rules," said Jacob Akol, who is also online editor of Gurtong. Akol
started to doubt the government's commitment to press freedom after "the
prolonged delays in passing these laws and the continued intimidation and
arbitrary arrest of journalists by individual 'referees' applying their own
rules in the absence of official ones," he
wrote in Gurtong.

Even if the bills are passed, Ngor acknowledges that the
same people who arbitrarily detained him, contravening the country's
constitution, could still do so.

"These people thought they could silence us by intimidating
me and breaking the law," Ngor told me. "But I told them even if they killed me
they could not kill the freedom of the press." He is still in pain from his
ordeal.

Despite his ordeal, Ngor believes there is press freedom in
South Sudan and that many in the government support it. "It is a question of
individuals within the government," Ngor said. Destiny has consulted the Information Ministry and hopes suspension
of the paper will be lifted in the near future, he said.

South Sudan fought a protracted civil war with Sudan in a
bid for greater autonomy and civil rights, culminating in its independence in July this
year. Ngor said: "It's as if they have forgotten what we were fighting for. How
can you lose millions of people for freedom and now this?"

Tom Rhodes is CPJ's East Africa representative, based in Nairobi. Rhodes is a founder of southern Sudan’s first independent newspaper. Follow him on Twitter: @africamedia_CPJ

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