South Sudan’s National Security Service has ordered the closure of the English daily Juba Monitor, according to a source who works for the paper.
The paper did not appear yesterday and many readers wondered about the cause. “We hope they will allow it to resume,” said one reader of the paper.
The National Security Service has not announced whether the closure will be only temporary or will be permanent. According to a media source, officials from the National Security Service only gave verbal orders to the newspaper not to publish.
The security officials were reportedly not happy about an article written by Juba Monitor Editor Alfred Taban about the recent violence in Wonduruba area of Central Equatoria State.
Unrest at Juba Telegraph
Meanwhile, another Juba-based newspaper has fired their Editor-in-Chief Emmanuel Monychol Akop, according to a report by the Nation Mirror, a newspaper which was also closed down earlier this year but continues to run a website.
“The pro-government newspaper made the decision this week. The Telegraph Chief Executive Officer, Ateny Wek Ateny, who is also the spokesman to President Salva Kiir, said the move was purely administrative,” reads the report by the Mirror.
Ateny declined to disclose the specific “administrative” cause when asked by the Mirror.
The editor-in-chief confirmed his departure from the newspaper in an article under the headline “good bye” published on Tuesday. When contacted by phone to explain the reasons behind his departure, however, he declined to comment and hung up the phone.
Emmanuel said on his Facebook on Wednesday, “While I take this opportunity to apologise to anyone who might have been offended inadvertently by our news angles, I believe that over the past one year, our editorial policy has served to the expectation of our international and local readers inside South Sudan, and, I sincerely wish that the same policy continues to improve even in my absence.”
Meanwhile, another source at the newspaper speaking to Radio Tamazuj slammed the Telegraph owners as a “few thugs in the office of the president,” criticizing the paper for avoiding controversial stories.
Photo: Juba Monitor Editor-in-Chief Alfred Taban (VOA)