Sudan Suspends English-language Paper - Managing Editor

JUBA, Sudan (AFP)--Sudan's security forces have suspended a local English- language daily newspaper, the latest in a series of threats and restrictions against the press, its managing editor said Monday.

Izzadine Abdul Rassou said when he took The Citizen, a southern newspaper, to be printed Sunday, security forces said the daily was being suspended.

"They say we have been suspended indefinitely," Abdul Rassuou said. "What they are doing? They don't have a right to do that."

The newspaper, whose head office is in the semi-autonomous city of Juba, has to go to press in the capital Khartoum due to a lack of a printing press in the south.

However, editors have complained that government authorities have tightened restrictions on local media in recent months, demanding that southern-based newspapers move their head office to Khartoum.

Abdul Rassou said the National Press Council had issued letters demanding The Citizen's chief editor be based in Khartoum.

It follows similar moves last month against the Sudan Tribune newspaper, which had its copies seized 17 times in August by Sudanese security forces.

The interim constitution in Sudan, ushered in for the six-year implementation of a peace agreement that ended two decades of civil war between north and south, upholds freedom of the press and expression.

But censorship is practiced daily. The powerful security apparatus inspects newspaper editions nightly, while editors who refuse to remove articles deemed offensive risk a ban on their publications.