Topic: Freedom of the Press
Country: Sudan
Delegate Name: Danielle Dow
School: Forest Hills Eastern High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Sudan position papers GLIMUN 2009 committees
In the Sudan, there used to no freedom of the press. That is, there used to be no freedom of the press until September 29, 2009, when President Omer Al-Bashir lifted the censorship previously placed on the Sudanese press. Though he lifted the censorship, he advised against the editors in chief publishing items or opinions that would mix “what is patriotic and what is destructive to the nation, sovereignty, security, values and its morality” and “avoid what leads to exceeding the red lines”. These words come from our President Al-Bashir himself and we support him. This policy is new to the country of Sudan, so we would appreciate some leniency towards us as we continue to convert all of our press to no censorship and let our citizens adjust themselves to this new change.
We encourage the rest of the world that does enforce censorship on their national press to follow us, and other countries such as the United States, England, Canada, Italy and other’s example and disbar their censorship in order to ensure equal rights to all of the news bureaus that reach all of the citizens of the world. This is a critical change for the entire world, as every citizen deserves to be able to receive news free from censorship. We would support all those who choose to change their censorship status in their transition and in any resulting conflicts.
