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| Originally Aired: October 9, 2006 |
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Sudanese Government Drops Spy Charges, Releases American Journalist |
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| On August 6, Chicago Tribune correspondent Paul Salopek and two assistants were jailed by the Sudanese government for more than a month on charges of spying before officials dropped the charges. Salopek discusses his detention and coverage of the crisis in Darfur. |
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JEFFREY BROWN: In early August, reporter Paul Salopek, his translator and driver were stopped while traveling in the Darfur region of western Sudan. For the next 34 days, they were held in a variety of jails, first by members of the militia, later by the Sudanese government. Salopek and his colleagues were charged with spying, spreading false news, and entering Darfur without a visa. They endured beatings, long interrogations, solitary confinement, and threats with long imprisonment and death before an international outcry led to a pardon on September 9th. Salopek, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner, was on a freelance assignment for National Geographic when he was arrested. Yesterday, for the first time, he wrote the story of his ordeal and of the worsening situation in Darfur in his own newspaper, the Chicago Tribune. He joins us now. Welcome to you. PAUL SALOPEK, Reporter, Chicago Tribune: Thank you. JEFFREY BROWN: The only one of these charges that was true was that you entered Darfur without a visa. Give us a little sense of what it's like to report in this region. PAUL SALOPEK: In a chaotic region such as the Chad-Sudan border, there basically isn't a border. It's open desert area where you have at least six different armed factions roaming around, including bandits. So the notion that there is control of any kind there is nominal at best, and the only way to get the story is to go there. JEFFREY BROWN: You saw firsthand, through your arrest and then handover, the kind of complexities on the ground, the shifting alliances through what you called a keyhole view, unwanted. Tell us what you saw. PAUL SALOPEK: Well, we were captured two hours after crossing into the border by a pro-government militia. They held us for three days, separated us immediately. My colleague, Idriss Abdulrahman Anu, my driver, and my translator, Suleiman Abakar Moussa, we were held in separate huts, were not allowed to talk to each other. And basically we were bargained away, is the sense that I get. After the third day, we were handed over to Sudanese military intelligence for a box of new uniforms. JEFFREY BROWN: One of the places you were held then was called the "ghost house," kind of clandestine jail. Tell us what those are like? Who was usually held there? PAUL SALOPEK: After we were transferred to the Sudanese authorities, they flew us by helicopter to a garrison town called El Fasher. And we were taken in a vehicle with tinted vehicles to what was basically a walled compound inside of a military base. These ghost house, that's the colloquial term that Sudanese use for clandestine jails where political prisoners are held, interrogated and sometime disappeared. We had no way to get any word out to our embassies or to our families, and we were held there for 10 days incommunicado. |
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'Nobody should tell the story'
JEFFREY BROWN: Now, you have written now that your real crime was reporting on this humanitarian crisis. Did you feel that the Sudanese ever really believed that you were spying or was this all about intimidation?PAUL SALOPEK: I picked up from the interrogations, almost from the very beginning, the crude nature of the questioning that went on for day after days that even they did not believe, these spying charges against me. Therefore, I was convinced it was going to be a show trial, a political trial whose purpose was to scare off international reporters from crossing that border again to report on that side of the war. JEFFREY BROWN: That was the message, "Nobody should tell this story anymore"? PAUL SALOPEK: That was never explicitly stated, but after 10 days of interrogation, I have no doubt. JEFFREY BROWN: Based on what you saw, you now write that you see a situation poised to turn worse even within the next few weeks, is that right? PAUL SALOPEK: That's correct. Again, a keyhole view, but a unique one in the sense that it was from inside the belly of these security agencies that are prosecuting the government's war in Darfur. And what I saw, hearing from my interrogators -- interrogations are, after all, two-way streets -- and our jailers that the government is gearing up for a dry-season offensive. The very jailers who are holding us, the guards who were holding us, were being mobilized and were very frightened. They had no desire to go to war themselves. So I think it's going to be a very ugly new phase in Darfur, because the rebel factions have atomized. JEFFREY BROWN: This is after the May peace deal. PAUL SALOPEK: After the May peace deal. JEFFREY BROWN: And all of this has fallen apart. PAUL SALOPEK: You know, they never were completely united. They fought each other before. But now the old alliances have broken up, and they're shifting. So there's a lot of confusion on the ground. And some of these groups, unfortunately, have turned into ethnic militias that don't represent ordinary Darfurian, or certainly not a broad spectrum, and others have devolved into banditry. So it's a very dangerous time to be in Darfur now. |
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Role of the reporter
JEFFREY BROWN: You also wrote in your piece in the Tribune yesterday that paradoxically some on the ground now think that the well-intentioned human rights campaign may have locked things into place in a negative way, unfortunately.PAUL SALOPEK: Yes. That was a counterintuitive bit of information that I got from two sources, not surprisingly, the Sudanese. The military sources complained bitterly of their treatment at the hands of the western media and felt that they were, having been painted as the devil, had nothing to lose to act like the devil. You know, on the other hand, certain officials affiliated with AMIS, the African Union peacekeeping force whose job is to broker a cease-fire, were also complaining that right now what they needed was a couple weeks of quiet in order to engage Khartoum, to bring it back to the table before the bloodshed begins. JEFFREY BROWN: How do you define your role, the reporter's role, in a crisis like this? Is there a sense of bearing witness to the world? PAUL SALOPEK: I think that's a good way of putting it. I certainly don't consider myself an activist. I'm a reporter. And what I do is go to these places and hopefully portray -- my specialty, anyway, is a grassroots level of reporting -- about what ordinary people are feeling, in this case, what millions of Darfurians are feeling, living in a place that's a perpetual war zone. So, yes, it is to go and bear witness and to bring back what people see and tell you. JEFFREY BROWN: And you're saying that things may get worse very soon. Will the world have a way of knowing? PAUL SALOPEK: Well, I certainly think we're hearing it already. There was a mini-offensive launched in August. Word is starting to percolate out now. We heard aircraft coming in every night over our prison after curfew that our jailers told us were laden with Sudanese troops. And it's no secret that Sudan is reinforcing its forces in Darfur in contravention of the cease-fire agreement. The hope, I think, was that they're hoping a quick knockout blow to the remaining anti-peace rebels would bring them a military advantage before U.N. troops arrive and lock in territorial gains. The rebels feel the same. Whether or not, though, Jeff, this offensive goes ahead or not in this dry season, I think the suffering is going to grow anyway because of the confusion and the violence. JEFFREY BROWN: All right. Thanks for telling us your story. Paul Salopek of the Chicago Tribune, thanks. PAUL SALOPEK: Thank you for having me. |
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Sudanese Government Drops Spy Charges, Releases American Journalist |
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