May 22nd 2019 (Nyamilepedia) – South Sudan’s National Security Service (NSS) removed an opinion article supposedly published on al-Mougif newspaper issue scheduled for Tuesday, a correspondent for the Juba-based Arabic daily told Nyamilepedia.
The article titled: “Five months without salaries, enough Your Excellency,” was written by a South Sudan government employee and criticized president Salva Kiir’s government for delaying pay for civil servants for more than five months while financing war efforts.
Dengdit Madut, a Cairo-based correspondent for the newspaper told the Nyamilepedia that the article was removed by a NSS officer from the printing machine and were informed by the printing agency about this after the publication of the daily issue.
For his part, the Editor-in-chief for the newspaper, Mathiang Cirilo, told the Eye Radio that he received a phone call from the printing press informing him that a security officer had removed an article from Tuesday’s issue.
Mathiang condemned the act saying it is an attack on the media freedom in the country.
“This morning, an important article in the newspaper was removed. I received a phone call from an employee working with the printing press informing me that, the security said an article in the opinion page should be removed,” he said.
“The article titled ‘Mr. President, we have been without salaries for 5 months’ the security personal says we should not publish the article and should look for an alternative article,” he added.