South Sudan Radio Station Raided Ahead of Elections

It has been clear for months now that the Sudanese regime is manipulating the electoral process to remain in power. Through a multi-faceted campaign of stoking violence in the southern provinces, manipulating the national census, signing a peace agreement with a Darfur rebel group while attacking another one, and using state security forces to threaten and intimidate opposition to the government, the regime continues to work hard to isolate all threats to its power.

Until recently, the government has done a remarkable job of keeping many of these tactics less obvious. But events like the one that happened today in south Sudan are bringing to light the reality of how far this power-thirtsy, genocidal regime is willing to go to stay in power. Here is a snippet from an article by Reuters:

Security officers forced their way into two south Sudanese radio stations and detained staff after one of them broadcast an interview with an election campaigner, station managers said on Friday.

Media activists said the raids on Bakhita Radio and Liberty FM highlighted harassment of journalists in the south in the run-up to presidential and legislative elections next month.

Staff at Liberty FM told Reuters armed men who said they were from south Sudan’s police burst into the station’s office in the southern capital Juba on Wednesday and forced it to stop broadcasting.

“They came with guns held high,” said station manager Albino Tokwaro. “(One of the men) locked up the radio building and took the keys with him.”

Tokwaro said he was taken to a police station and interviewed by a senior officer. “He said ‘You are producing bad programs that bring hatred of the people.’”

Tokwaro said Liberty FM had aired a live interview with a member of the campaign team for Alfred Lado Gorre, an independent candidate for the governorship of Central Equatoria state, which includes Juba.

He said the interview had included complaints about the lack of clean water, health facilities and good roads in the city.

No one was immediately available to comment from the police.

The south’s Roman Catholic Bakhita Radio released a statement saying security men also raided its premises on Wednesday and arrested the manager, Sister Cecilia Sierra Salcido, a nun, without explaining their actions.

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Photo courtesy of Sudan Watch: A group of arrested people wait to be loaded into trucks to take them to central Khartoum from their camp for displaced people just south of the town Tuesday, May 24, 2005. Thousands of police descended on the camp Tuesday to make arrests in connection with deadly clashes last week between police and residents resisting being moved.