Journalists in Sudan have formed the country’s first independent journalists’ union ad elected the union’s leadership. More than half of the new union’s 1,164 members voted in leadership elections on Sunday, Reuters reported. The formation of the union comes three years after the removal of long-time dictator, Omar al-Bashir, a member of the military who had seized power through a coup about 30 years ago and who had packed union with regime-friendly members and nearly a year after a military coup led by Sudanese General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. A civilian-led transitional government is supposed to be established in Sudan ahead of general elections which are scheduled for July 2023.
Meanwhile, Yemen government officials and rights groups are calling on the Iran-backed Houthi rebels to stop the physical and psychological torture of four journalists that it has been holding since 2015, and to allow then to go to hospital to take care of the severe health problems that they have developed in prison due to the torture. Tawfiq Al-Mansouri, Akram Al-Walidy, Abdul Khaleq Omaran and Harith Hamid were four of nine journalists who were abducted by the Houthis from a Sanaa hotel in 2015. Five journalists were freed in a 2020 prisoner swap with the Houthis.
The Houthis closed dozens of media outlets and rounded up journalists who stayed behind when they took over Sanaa in 2014.