By Taban Gabi
It’s been 6 days now a colleague journalist and one humble Diing Magot who practices with the Voice of America (VOA), has been kept in incarceration without any form of fairness.
Diing has not committed any crime but her fault was conducting a media coverage on a protest executed by preys of economic meltdown.
This brand of arrest isn’t a new thing in our context though, but keeping her for number of days without any legal procedure, amounts to felony against journalists.
Law enforcement agents ought to know that a Journalist is not an enemy of the State but rather a fair messenger who relates every story including that from the custodian of the laws and the underdogs.
If there is any case against Journalist Diing, the police should be transparent enough to employ legal procedures in public court rather than keeping her in detention with no apparent evidence of a crime committed.
Authorities also have to be duty bound to the value and noble thing that Diing’s media practice will earn our country, since her reporting is not restricted on damaging situations only but also on every progress and achievement that our country triumphs in whether economically, political or socially.
This is not to say that some of the barbaric confinements meted against journalists in South Sudan should go un probed.
Media organizations should compile such arrests for everyone in the diaspora to have a clear picture of daily tribulations media practitioners face in South Sudan.
Civil societies and other human rights organizations are witnesses to harassments meted on media folks by some sections of law enforcement agents.
Having said that, I would also like to implore media organizations to liaise with different command of law enforcement to educate the police and military about the roles of journalists in the country.
I said this because, the media industry has vigorously remained a target of some law enforcers who in my thoughts are completely oblivious about the role that media plays in the country.
Taban Gabriel is a freelance journalist; for any query about the article, he can be reached on the email address: Gabronn2014@gmail.com