South Sudanese journalist, Alfred Angasi Dominic has been released by the country’s National Security Service, after a prolonged detention without charges.
Angasi, a news anchor at the country’s national broadcaster, South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SSBC) was first arrested on July 3 for allegedly refusing to anchor news containing President Sallva Kiir’s decrees for the appointment of some constitutional post holders.
His sister, Cecelia Dominic had also told the Committee to Protect Journalist (CPJ) that her brother informed her that his detention followed a disagreement at SSBC over his refusal to read a news item, although she did not specify the news. The president of the Union of Journalists of South Sudan (UJOSS), Patrick Oyet who also spoke to CPJ via messaging app confirmed the report.
Angasi was released on July 4 and rearrested the next day. He was kept in detention without charges for nearly three weeks.
Oyet also told CPJ that the journalists union of South Sudan sent a lawyer to meet with their detained member on July 20, but the authorities did not allow the lawyer to meet with Angasi. They only assured that the journalist would be released, soon. He was finally released on Saturday, July 24, following the pressure of CPJ and UJOSS.
Prior to his release, CPJ and UJOSS called on the Sudanese authorities to release the journalist.
“South Sudanese authorities’ detention of journalist Alfred Angasi for nearly three weeks, without charging him with any crime, sends a threatening message to media workers in the country and demonstrates a cruel disregard for the journalist’s health,” said CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative, Muthoki Mumo.
“Authorities must release Angasi immediately, and security personnel must stop retaliating against journalists for their work and editorial stances.”
In a statement, UJOSS also disclosed that such an issue should have been “an internal administrative” matter at the SSBC and demanded that authorities produce Angasi in court if he was suspected of a crime.
CPJ said it also repeatedly called Information Minister Michael Makuei Lueth, who also responds on behalf of the National Security Service, and Elijah Alier Kuai, the managing director of the Media Authority statutory regulator, but the calls did not connect. Additionally, CPJ sent a message to the Facebook account of South Sudan’s president’s office but did not immediately receive any response.
Angasi’s arrest is not the first in the last two years. Last year, the service arrested at least two journalists—Bullen Alexander Bala, a reporter with the private newspaper Juba Monitor, and Jackson Ochaya of the No. 1 Citizen newspaper—as CPJ documented at the time.
South Sudan is among the problematic countries in Africa, in press freedom ranking, according to the 2021 index report of Reporters without Borders. The latest press freedom ranking of countries in the world placed South Sudan at 139th place of 180 countries.