Three reporters held, shut down radio in South Sudan.

The AFP

Security officials temporarily detained three journalists in South Sudan and shut down their radio station on Friday, a rights group and a media union said during an activist-planned protest next week. In defiance of authorities, a coalition of civil society groups urged residents to hold national rallies on Monday and called on the country's leadership to resign.  Said the leader of a local rights group that security agents thronged the Jonglei FM facility, an independent radio station in eastern Jonglei, and held three senior journalists in prison before they confiscated their phones and closed down their activities.

"There have been three radio staff members; one is the radio manager, the other is the program manager, and the other the chief editor," says Bol Deng Bol, Intrepid South Sudan's Managing Director. Patrick Oyet, President of the Union of South Sudan Journalists (UJOSS), said AFP released detained later in the morning, but the radio station was still inoperative. The security officials anticipated that the station would "broadcast something related to the popular coalition call for demonstration," Patrick stated.

"This technique is wrong and as UJOSS we absolutely reject the safety procedure," Patrick added. Activist Bol stated the incident was a "attack" of freedom of the media. "We receive all information via radio stations and this is the major way for individuals to receive the information they want. So we oppose the attack on this home of the media, the shutting down of it, "Bol expressed that.

Truce tested sorely

There was no immediate comment from security personnel on the event. Weeks after two famous activists were imprisoned for joining the PCCA's call for a peaceful public uprising aimed at searching for policy change, news broke of the detentions. Earlier this month, the PCCA made a statement claiming that they "had enough" after ten years of armed war independence, increasing insecurity, famine and political instability. Reporters Without Borders, who reported that ten journalists had lost their lives in the country since 2014, rated 139th out of 180 countries in South Sudan.

Since its hard-waged independence from Sudan in 2011, the youngest nation in the world has struggled with civil war, famine and chronic political and economic catastrophe. The 2018 ceasefire and power-sharing agreement between erstwhile enemies Kir and Machar was only the most recent agreement struck by the two leaders whose antagonism triggered a terrible civil war that killed almost 400,000 people. Their truce still remains but is cruelly put to the test, as politicians struggle for power and promises of peace remain unfulfilled.