Sudanese Journalists Launch Historic Hunger Strike Against Free Press Crackdown

More than 30 Sudanese journalists have launched the country's biggest-ever hunger strike to protest the forced closure of their newspaper.

The journalists who work for the newspaper Al-Tayyar, which the government shuttered for the second time late last year, launched the movement on Tuesday to protest what they called an "arbitrary procedure" against the press in Sudan.

"This is the first ever hunger strike by journalists in the history of Sudanese press, and the first to happen outside a prison," reporter and columnist Shama'il Alnour told the Guardian.

"Of course, we have the immediate goal of lifting the suspension," she said. "But in general, we are using [Al-Tayyar's] case as an example while we defend freedom of expression."

The journalists, standing in lines wearing chains, announced the strike in an action outside of the newspaper's offices in Khartoum, where crowds of supporters greeted them. They then entered the building to begin their sit-in.

According to the paper's editorial director Khalid Fathy, the strike also includes other journalists as well as Sudanese politicians and activists.

Editor-in-chief Osman Marghani currently faces the death penalty over claims that he used the paper to "incite an Arab Spring" in Sudan. He told the Guardian, "The best outcome we anticipate from this [strike] is that the culture of protest, peaceful protest that is, spreads among Sudanese people."

Al-Tayyar was first shut down by the Sudanese government in 2012 but won an appeal in the country's constitutional court two years later.

Musa Hamid, a journalist who joined the crowd of supporters, told the Guardian, "This movement must be supported and is bound to achieve something positive."