By Matthew Russell Lee
SUDAN, October 7 -- On the UN plane of UN Ambassadors set to fly from Juba to Darfur on Thursday, one of the four Sudanese journalists on board was ordered to leave and give up his seat.
While he argued that he was on the flights manifest, and had obtained the permit required to report from Darfur, his backpack was thrown on the floor. A UN Security official threatened to "forcibly" remove him from the plane as Ambassadors did nothing.
As he struggled to pick his backpack off the floor, the Sudanese journalist said to his colleagues, we are being assaulted, are you going to accept it? All four ended up leaving. Mohamed Nur Al-Deen, Al-Tayeb Sideeg, Fayez Al-Zaki and Mohamed Yousif.
Ambassadors stared at the floor. One noted that the US has on the trip not only two staff members, but two additional personal security guards.
The disparate treatment of the Sudanese journalists began earlier in the day, in the base of the UN Mission in Sudan. The reporters traveling with the Security Council including Inner City Press were told to disembark the bus for lunch. The Sudanese journalists were left onboard and only rejoined the group after the UNMIS sandwiches were eaten.
The incidents seem less than diplomatic.
UN Plane in Juba, exclusion of Sudanese journalist(s) not shown, (c) MRLee
Discontent with the exclusions was widespread in the back of the plane, and in portions of the front. The traveling press, which had earlier in the trip complained of being slighted, "treated like baggage" as one reporter put it, was now chastened to see their local colleagues thrown off the plane. "We would sell each other out in a heartbeat," one of the traveling journalists said. A joint letter of complaint was discussed.
But to whom would a letter of complaint be directed? Who was really in charge of and during the journalist's exclusion? On the surface, it was the UN itself, UN Security. But it is a trip of Security Council Ambassadors, led by three Ambassadors. From whom would one request a copy of the manifest? Who is the UN, really? Sudanese and journalists in particular want to know. Watch this site.
Footnote / update: when the Ambassadors and Press arrived two hours later in Darfur, they were met first by a demonstration of women chanting pro-Bashir, anti-ICC slogans. At the gates of the airport, a much large protest had gathered, in which adults and children chanted anti-US slogans. In this context, the inartful expulsion of Sudanese journalists from the Ambassadors' flight seems particularly impolitic.