♦ This week’s news in brief ♦

A compact weekly digest of Dabanga Sudan's highlights of the news from Darfur and Sudan

♦ Cholera: Situation in Sennar worsens, six dead in South Darfur

July 18 – 2017 EL DINDIR / DARFUR The area of El Dindir in southeastern Sudan recorded 34 deaths by cholera this week. In a collaborative report doctors found that the local health centres in Sennar state are too ill-equipped to effectively treat all infected people. In Sennar, local health centres in El Dindir recorded 45 people who died of the disease that has spread throughout Sudan, and 280 cases of infection. People are being treated in small isolation wards. “These numbers will rise with the poor conditions of the health centres,” a report by the Central Committee of Sudnaese Doctors stated. An increase in the number of cases in the past days coincided with a poor drinking water supply, in particular with regard to the current rainy season. “The rains have isolated our remote villages even more,” said Mahjoub Osman, a relative of a cholera patient in El Dindir.

Reports from El Salam camp in South Darfur include six people who died of cholera last week. There were seventeen cases of infection in total, volunteers told Radio Dabanga, and warned of increased rates of infection in the camps and surrounding villages when the rainy season peaks.

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♦ Three journalists, newspapers repressed

July 18 – 2017 KHARTOUM Three Sudanese journalists were summoned and questioned by the Sudanese security service this week, while one journalist was released from prison after enough money to pay her fine was raised with crowdfunding.

Officers of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) summoned journalist Hanadi El Siddig on Friday because of a column she published in El Jareeda newspaper last week. On Thursday morning, the entire print-run of El Jareeda was confiscated. The newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Ashraf Abdelaziz and El Siddig were summoned to one of the NISS offices in Khartoum. El Siddig had written a column on the abuse of power by security officers. She was told to report to the office again the following morning.

The NISS frequently attempts to intimidate journalists by summoning them. Another journalist was questioned for several hours by the NISS on Sunday after she published an interview with the director of the president’s office in El Tayyar newspaper. They demanded her to hand over the audio recording of the interview.

On Tuesday, Radio Dabanga reported that journalist and well-known human rights activist Amal Habbani was released from prison after a crowdfunding campaign raised enough money to pay a fine for refusing to cooperate with security agents. Habbani was halted by a security agent in March this year, who told her to hand over her mobile telephone on the grounds that she had photographed NISS officers at a court session.

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