A South Sudanese veteran journalist, the Editor in Chief of the Juba Monitor Newspaper has welcomed his nomination for the 2016 Prize for Press Freedom by Reporters without Borders.
Alfred Taban is among 22 journalists from 19 countries worldwide facing prosecution or imprisonment without submitting to self-censorship.
In July 2005, Speaker of the British House of Commons, Michael Martin presented the Speaker Abbot award to Alfred Taban in recognition of his work in exposing the civilian massacre in Darfur, Sudan.
He expresses in an interview with CRN reporter that he is very delighted for the nomination for the Press Freedom reward.
‘As a journalist indeed, I have received so many threads to my life, and this include arrest and banning of my newspaper several times in Juba’.
Taban was arrested and detained by security personnel in Juba for 13 days in August 19th this year and later released without charges.
‘They said I had written many articles which were against the government, which undermined the authority of the government’, he reports.
He says he was expressing his opinion about the terrible situation the South Sudanese were subjected to in July, including the killings, raping and looting of property in Juba.
‘I was talking about these things and I said that the government had failed to protect the people of South Sudan. And I was asking the President and the first Vice President to resign both of them to be removed’.
He argues that his arrest by the security people was a violation of his rights, violation of the rights of journalists to express themselves and violation of the right of the people of South Sudan to express freely.
Taban laments that he was not tortured physically during the arrest, but he underwent a lot of emotional stress.
‘I was asked to report from church, to the security. I was not given chance to come home and I thought that is bad, I thought my family had a right to know where I am. Secondly, I had a bible with me, I wanted to go in to the jail with the bible, they say no you cannot go with bible, you cannot go with mobile phone, you cannot go with anything’, he adds.
He stresses that according to the laws of South Sudan, he was supposed to be released within 24 hours, or charged, or taken to court.
‘Worst than that, I had diabetics and when you are diabetic, there are certain type of food that you eat. You don’t eat just any food. They allowed my family to bring food there. That was good, but diabetic people, you are advised to eat only small, small quantity, but they were allowing my family to bring food only once a day, so I was eating a lot of food at once, but I had no alternative because I know, no food will come until tomorrow at the same time’, he grieves.
Taban claims that his diabetics was worst than before because of the situation he went through in the prision.