Silence kills: The state of media in war-torn Sudan

The proverbial phrase, ‘caught between a rock and a hard place’, is the situation of media in Sudan. Two warring factions have placed the media in the crosshairs with both belligerents actively suppressing media for political ends.

Sudan’s journalists are on the run, media houses destroyed, and years of media archives set on fire. There is no commitment from either side to respect or observe media rights in a war of attrition that has reached a catastrophic point and destroyed Sudan’s infrastructure, causing what is one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crises.

The Sudan crisis is a silent conflict in global media and diplomatic circles: over 60,000 people have been killed and more than 11 million displaced but the conflict has not attracted any significant global media or political attention. Among the millions of Sudanese being silenced are journalists and their media houses. The Sudan conflict has fallen victim to “conflict ranking” with the world now focused on Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and the war in Gaza, in which thousands of people, including journalists, have been killed. With global attention mainly focused on these two conflicts, Sudan has essentially become the forgotten conflict. For the Sudanese media, who are barely functional, the conflict is akin to the proverbial death by a thousand cuts, unfortunately with no one seeming to care.

Focus on the impact of the Sudanese conflict on media and free expression has been scant among developmental partners, human rights organisations and international media organisations. Attempts at organising for the Sudanese media are few and far between: international media actors have set up a Sudan Media Reference Group and offered support to a few journalists to relocate, and funded a few media outlets to continue producing stories on Sudan.

IMS has participated in Sudan Reference Group meetings and closely monitored the Sudan situation in consultation with international partners. In 2019, IMS supported a local Sudanese TV station to continue broadcasting. It also provided strategic support to Khartoon Mag, an online publication that offers satirical commentary on the social and political situation in Sudan.

The Sudan Media Forum (SMF), a network of Sudanese journalists in Sudan and in exile, says that the number of active journalists inside Sudan is anywhere between 250 and 300 while before the war, at least 1500 journalists were active. Of journalists still in Sudan, it is estimated that only 70 or so are still working in the conflict zones, with this number likely to decline further. Rather than work in the open, journalists have to hide and work anonymously which further limits their capacity to collect information and move freely. 

Of the 1500 Sudanese journalists only 20% were women and those who are still active now face worse conditions, having to operate in a largely gender insensitive media environment.  

The SMF estimates that 90% of Sudanese media houses have been destroyed. That number includes 27 newspapers that have stopped operating. The few hundreds of journalists still active have to compete with thousands of disinformation posts on social media platforms that are created by the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese military to propagate their positions, attacking those they perceive as enemies as they battle for supremacy. 

Sudanese are increasingly relying on social media and Arab TV channels for news. Sudanese journalists are now scattered in exile in Egypt, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Uganda and 75 years of media archives have been destroyed, according to the SMF. Free movement of journalists is severely limited, especially in the East with journalists needing special permits from the army. The destruction of the Sudanese media is a greater tragedy for a people in conflict as there is no reliable and trusted sources of information that are on the ground to tell the story of the people outside political filters. 

Some journalists have been kidnapped and beaten while others have been ostracised over their coverage of the Sudan conflict. 

In this situation, the Sudan media is asking for support to keep whatever barebones news production it can muster, as failing to do this would be a complete collapse of the media in Sudan. SMF says exiled Sudanese journalists need support to continue working in host countries and possibly continue covering Sudan remotely. This support will need to extend to the set-up of platforms for content distribution, especially online news platforms. SMF and other Sudanese media need support to create content that informs internally displaced people as well as the millions seeking refuge in Chad, Ethiopia and South Sudan. The near global silence on the Sudan conflict demonstrates once again a need for a resilient African media that can tell its own story outside the usual dominant global media actors.

The socio-psychological impact of this war on Sudanese journalists has barely been looked at and it could be that the mental scars from this war are far bigger than the physical scars. Sudan is a classic conflict that shows that silence kills.