In Sudan, journalists have come together to form the country’s first independent professional union in decades, in what campaigners have described as a crucial step towards re-establishing media freedoms after a military coup. Election for the Union’s leadership was held on Sunday.
The union has 1,164 members, 659 of whom took part in Sunday’s vote.
Shadow unions that sprang up in opposition to autocrat Omar al-Bashir, who packed unions with regime-friendly members, were instrumental in an uprising that toppled him in 2019.
A military coup last October ended a power-sharing arrangement with civilians that followed the uprising.
The coup also led to the suspension of a radio station, and some TV journalists were subject to attacks, raids or arrests that they blamed on security forces and loyalists of the former regime.
Journalists aligned with Bashir had attempted to prevent Sunday’s vote going ahead by raising an ongoing legal complaint, saying the syndicate could not replace the pre-existing Bashir-era union.
However, election committee head Faisal Mohamed Salih, who served as information minister in a civilian-led government between the uprising and the coup, said the vote “was executed in a completely democratic way… smoothly and with a high turnout and excitement among the journalists”.
