Memoirs of arrest for reporting in parliament

Media and press freedoms tested inside parliament

Memoirs of arrest for reporting in parliament

 

With Opoka Christopher Arop

 

It is exactly four years since I was detained for four hours against my will for having conducted interviews with honourable members of the Eastern Equatoria Legislative Assembly in Torit, albeit in the state parliament. “Journalism has imperatively become a crime in the state,” I wrote later that year.

 

I had gone to Torit on the invitation of the then Governor Emilio Ojetuk to cover the opening of the state legislative assembly after it had been in recess for a long period. I sought permission and it was granted from one security official. I had with me the following; Union of Journalists of Southern Sudan identification, The Juba Post newspaper identity card, school identification and a recent Press Card for the concluded SPLM Political Bureau Meeting.

 

Before the session could start, I had had an off the record chat with one member of the house Hon. Patrice Bafura of the Southern Sudan Democratic Forum. His rhetoric was sharp and piercing and he gave me the impression that the house was clearly not happy with the conduct of business by the Speaker.

 

It was after the session was adjourned that I had my first full interview with one member of the house. It was a lengthy and passionate interview. And I even took many pictures of the departed assembly while I listened to the tale of my interviewee. I knew it was responsible journalism to conduct an interview with the Speaker of the assembly as soon as I could.

 

“Why are you bringing back the issue of impeachment,’ was the voice of a security officer whose tribe I could tell by the scarring on his face.

 

He ordered that I pack my gadgets and stop recording. He did all this in the watchful gaze of a rather bemused Honourable member of the house. My theories of democracy and the house of the law all vanished with the winds as I was being assaulted in a house every state citizen should have felt safest.

 

I was asked random questions as to who had given permission for me interview members of the house about the issue of the Speaker’s impeachment/re-impeachment. I was asked to re-identify myself in the presence of my previous security check official.

 

This went on for over an hour. At this point my recorder had already been confiscated along with the camera and note pad.

 

Later I was asked to come to the balcony of the assembly, and this was when I had a feeling my life was in danger. I was stopped from making any phone calls, although I had already sent a text message to Charles Rehan and some staff at the Juba Post offices in Juba. I can’t remember to this date what I wrote in the text. All I remembered hours later was “Torit…recorder…arrest,” and not in the exact order.

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When I had a window of opportunity, I dialled my stepfather’s number, who was by then the Director for Administration and Finance in the state ministry of Education. This angered the security people, now numbering four. I did feel scared, but I also knew that it was a risk worth taking. Somebody other than my colleagues at the office in Juba needed to be informed. My stepfather’s proximity made the more sense years later.

 

At about half passed midday I was escorted to office of the Speaker. A jovial and smiling woman I had formed an image, sat in one of those huge heavily cushioned arm chairs. In the office there were eight people all members of the Assembly Business Committee. I was sandwiched in between sofa-sets.

 

My tape recorder and camera were produced and I was asked to play the tape. I declined to play the recording. I informed the gathering all in the room would party to abuse of press freedom and pushing a journalist to compromise his professional ethics.

 

The house debated my fate with open division in opinion as to what could be done about the allegations I had by now labelled against those in the room. And for conducting interviews without permission.

 

A section of the members led by one Honourable who had grey beards whom later the Speaker informed me as Akol and a thorn in the parliament to her prepositions, held a critical position of the Speaker and her cronies who had explained that I should surrender the tape and never write the story because the issue of impeachment would re-create and ignite division in the house.

 

Akol being a journalist excused himself from being part of what he termed a ‘grave crime’ and asked the speaker to let me go. The house was unmoved. Another member of the ABC wanted to speak and he was stopped. Instead Assembly Legal Counsel took over. The quarrel lasted about five minutes and voices were raised.

 

The Legal adviser made little sense. He was rightly torn between two forces. At one opening he was in defense of my story not getting to the papers and at another he felt press freedom was paramount. However, he sooner ate his own cake when he concluded that the issue of impeachment being brought back into the media canvas would taint the state interests and disturb tranquility.

 

As the President decides on signing the media bills into law, we all know what has happened in the last couple of year regarding these bills. We know the tricks and the tricksters that now own the document. We hope they will be the journalists that will objectively and fairly provide accurate information to the South Sudanese public when these bills are turned into law.

 

It is worth conceding this early that, if our premonitions are anything to go by, the credible journalists, very few, who want to create a niche for themselves as being objective, fair and impartial; who want to investigate issues, who want to find fault and help citizens demand for change; these bunch must quickly make reservations in national security detention centres and police cells. Government is not ready for a free press, and our free press are not ready for their freedom, or so it appears!!