Updated: 14 January 2026 15:12:19
8 Cross-Border .. Escalating Abuses Against Sudanese Journalists in 2025
Moatinoon
The Sudan Journalists’ Union has revealed an unprecedented deterioration in press freedom and journalists’ safety in Sudan, amid the continuation of the armed conflict for the third consecutive year since its outbreak in April 2023, warning that journalists have increasingly become direct targets of the war.
In its 2025 Annual Press Freedom Report, issued by the Union’s Freedoms Secretariat, the Union documented 67 violations against journalists and media workers during 2025 alone, bringing the total number of violations since the start of the war to 590 cases. These included killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, judicial harassment, threats, and violations targeting journalists in exile
According to the report, 14 journalists and media workers were killed in 2025, raising the total number of journalists who have lost their lives since the outbreak of the war to 34, including five women journalists. The report noted that some deaths resulted from indiscriminate shelling, while others involved direct targeting, death under torture, or denial of medical care during detention.
The report documented six cases of enforced disappearance, four cases of long-term detention, and nine cases of temporary arbitrary arrest and detention. It stressed that responsibility for these violations is shared among various parties to the conflict, as well as security and police forces in several states, reflecting the absence of legal safeguards and the persistence of impunity.
The city of El Fasher, capital of North Darfur, was identified as one of the most dangerous hotspots for journalists in 2025, due to continuous shelling, lack of security, and near-total communication blackouts, which severely hindered documentation and information flow. The report warned that the documented cases likely represent only a fraction of the actual violations.
Women journalists faced compounded targeting throughout 2025, including arrest, smear campaigns, and threats, exacerbated by additional social and security constraints limiting their access to protection and support.
In a troubling development, the report recorded eight cross-border violations against Sudanese journalists in exile, particularly in Egypt and Libya, ranging from physical assaults to security threats and summonses, indicating that the risks facing journalists extend beyond Sudan’s borders.
The report also highlighted four cases of judicial harassment, in which criminal law was used to criminalize journalistic work by filing politically and security-motivated charges against journalists known for opposing the war and advocating democratic transition—actions the Union described as the politicization of the judiciary to silence independent voices.
The Union concluded that these violations constitute a systematic assault on press freedom, pose a direct threat to the public’s right to information, and undermine prospects for democratic transition and peace in Sudan.
The Sudan Journalists’ Union called on all parties to the conflict to respect journalists as civilians, immediately release all arbitrarily detained journalists, and disclose the fate of those forcibly disappeared. It also urged national authorities to end institutional restrictions on journalism and called on the international community and host countries to provide urgent and effective protection for Sudanese journalists.
