03/11/2024
Are South Sudanese journalists losing the war against censorship?
On November 2nd. 2024, on an international day to end impunity for crimes against journalists, I was attending a meeting in one of the hotels in Juba then I received a request from the TV channel for which I work to prepare for a “live cross” (live broadcast).
It wasn’t a big problem since I always move with my equipment for live broadcast, however, I did not have my cameraman with me, he was unwell and was on treatment, I then turned to my two other journalist colleagues who were present for that meeting as well, I requested for help with handling tripod and an umbrella which the two willingly colleagues accepted.
When the time for the live broadcast reached, we requested for permission and left the meeting room, we moved out of the premises of the hotel and went across a road to look for a “live position”, after a bit of struggle with where to position equipment and where I was supposed to stand, we finally found a suitable spot.
As soon as we set up our equipment, we were approached by one staff from the hotel who had secretly followed us, “What are you people doing, I saw you at the hotel with some equipment and now you are here setting up things that I don’t understand?” He enquired.
I was agitated, there were several things that I didn’t like about the question, first of all, this particular staff did not even bother to first greet us and introduce himself before asking the question.
Secondly, whatever equipment we had set (and by the time he approached us, we had already set) were clearly media equipment, I was standing in front of a camera so, the part of the question which said we were setting up equipment that he did not understand was clearly untrue statement. He knew what equipment we had.
So, my response to the question was, was a question as well, I asked him if he had never seen a camera before that day and if cameras were banned in and around that hotel. He said he was not informed that there would be cameras in the hotel but of course clearly, we were not even in the hotel at that time.
One of my colleagues who was even wearing a t-shirt branded with the name of one of the South Sudanese popular media houses then asked whether or not he was the manager of the hotel.
His reply was that he was a security officer at the hotel (private security officer), so to avoid delay since we were running out of time to test our signal, we told him that we were journalists and we were just doing our work and reminded him that we were not even at the hotel but we were on a public road where he was definitely not in charge of.
He still insisted on asking for which media house we work, to which question we replied politely and he left us to do our work, we completed our live broadcast, went back to the hotel, finalized our meeting and we left.
However, there is this last part of the story, which made me unable to stop thinking about the whole situation.
That particular security officer actually is a foreign national from one of our immediate neighboring countries, I AM NEVER against any foreign national working in South Sudan but I felt and I still feel bad that a foreign national working as a security guard in a hotel in my country could stop me from my work, question me and probably even stop me from doing my job on a public road. To me, this means as journalists, we are losing the war against censorship.
Courtesy: Oyet Patrick, UJOSS President
