The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on South Sudan’s government to immediately reopen the Nation Mirror newspaper. Security services ordered the independent daily to close on Wednesday morning, according to editors.
“President Salva Kiir’s government should immediately allow the Nation Mirror to resume publication,” said Murithi Mutiga, CPJ’s East Africa representative.
“South Sudan needs more, not fewer, independent and critical voices. Preventing professional journalists from doing their work will not advance efforts to build a democratic and stable South Sudan,”he added.
For his part, Paul Jacob Kumbo, South Sudan’s director general of information, told CPJ that he did not know why the paper was closed or how long it would remain shuttered.”This was a decision by the security officials and I am still waiting for more information on it,” he said.
The newspaper’s editor, Aurelions Simon Chopee, told Radio Tamazuj that security officials had ordered the newspaper to close, saying they were summoned over alleged engagement in activities that are incompatible with the newspaper’s registration status.
In its most recent edition, the Nation Mirror newspaper covered a report by The Sentry, a Washington advocacy group, which claimed that President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar, had amassed enormous wealth and invested it in multimillion dollar properties abroad, while a conflict triggered by a dispute between the pair has left many citizens in South Sudan living in poverty.