The War on Truth: Sudan's Journalists Are Being Hunted
Sudan ranks 161st out of 180 countries for press freedom. 34 journalists killed since 2023. 400+ in exile. The war is not just destroying lives — it is destroying the record of its own atrocities.
161st SUDAN'S GLOBALPRESS FREEDOM RANK
34 JOURNALISTS KILLED SINCE APRIL 2023
400+ JOURNALISTS FLED SUDAN
556 DOCUMENTED VIOLATIONS AGAINST PRESS (2025)
Every war has two fronts. The first is the battlefield, the guns, the drones, the trenches. The second is the information war: who gets to record what happened, who gets to name the dead, who gets to tell the world what is being done in the dark. In Sudan, the second front has been almost entirely overrun. Since April 2023, Sudan's journalists have not just been covering a war. They have been hunted by it. On May 3, World Press Freedom Day, the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index delivered its verdict: Sudan ranks 161st out of 180 countries, its lowest position ever, having dropped from 149th in 2024 to 156th in 2025 and now to 161st in 2026. The index recorded "the largest displacement of journalists in Sudan's history." More than 400 journalists have fled the country. Those who remain work under conditions that Reporters without Borders describes as among the most dangerous in the world. This is not a story about press freedom in the abstract. It is a story about specific people who were killed for holding a camera, detained for writing the truth, and tortured for refusing to become propagandists for either side of a war that has consumed their country.
The Global Picture: Press Freedom at a 25-Year Low
The 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index paints its darkest picture since the index began in 2002. For the first time in 25 years, more than half of the world's countries — 52.2% — are classified as "difficult" or "very serious" for press freedom. In 2002, only 13.7% of countries fell into those categories. In 2002, 20% of the global population lived in a country where press freedom was rated "good." Today, that figure has collapsed to less than 1%. The legal indicator measuring the misuse of laws against journalists, saw the steepest decline, deteriorating in more than 60% of countries. Governments across the world have discovered that you do not need to shoot journalists. You can imprison them under anti-terrorism laws, bankrupt them with defamation suits, deny them access to conflict zones, and let the silence do the work. Sudan, Iraq, and Yemen are singled out by RSF as countries where "recurring armed conflict is the primary reason for the decline in press freedom." But Sudan's trajectory is uniquely steep. No country in the Arab world ranks in the global top 50. The United States, which presents itself globally as a model of press freedom, fell to 64th, behind Mauritania, which leads the Arab world at 61st.
2 0 2 6 WORLD PRESS FREEDOM INDEX — ARAB & AFRICAN RANKINGS
Mauritania (Arab world leader): 61st
United States: 64th
Qatar: 75th
South Africa (Africa leader): 21st
Morocco: 105th
Syria (rose after Assad's fall): 141st
Palestine (West Bank): 153rd
UAE: 158th
Sudan (fell 5 places): 161st
Iraq: 162nd
Yemen: 164th
Egypt: 169th
Saudi Arabia: 176th
Eritrea (last globally, 3rd consecutive year):180th
Source: Reporters Without Borders, 2026 World Press Freedom Index — published May 3, 2026
Sudan: The Specific Catastrophe
Since April 15, 2023, Sudan's media ecosystem has not been damaged. It has been dismantled. The Sudanese Journalists Syndicate (SJS) has documented the deaths of 34 journalists since the war began, including 14 killed in 2025 alone. Twelve of those killed in 2025 were killed by the RSF. One died from injuries sustained through torture while in the custody of Sudan's Military Intelligence. Both sides are guilty. Neither has been held accountable. In 2025 alone, the SJS recorded 110 documented violations against journalists in a single year. Since the war began, the total exceeds 500 violations, detentions, assaults, disappearances, looting of newsrooms, targeted killings. 90% of Sudan's media institutions have been damaged or destroyed, according to the SJS. Most of what remains operates from exile, from Cairo, Kampala, Amsterdam, and London. Tom Perriello, former US Special Envoy to Sudan, put it plainly: "I don't think I've ever seen as big of a disconnect between the scale of a crisis and the scale of media coverage in my life. The scale of the suffering in Sudan is so high and the coverage is abominably low.
SUDAN'S PRESS UNDER FIRE — VERIFIED DATA (2023–2026)
Journalists killed since April 2023 (SJS) 34
Journalists killed in 2025 alone 14
Killed by RSF (2025) 12
Killed by SAF Military Intelligence (2025) 1
Journalists fled Sudan (RSF Index) 400+
Violations against journalists (2025 alone, SJS) 110
Total violations since April 2023 (SJS) 500+
Total violations documented (RSF, end of 2025) 556
Media institutions damaged or destroyed 90%
Journalists with unknown whereabouts (CPJ, May 2026) 8+
Sudan's press freedom rank (2024 → 2025 → 2026) 149 → 156 → 161
Sources: Sudanese Journalists Syndicate · RSF 2026 Index · Committee to Protect Journalists · Radio Dabanga · Nieman Reports
Names the World Didn't Hear
Behind every statistic is a name. The world did not hear most of them.
Taj al-Sir Ahmed Suleiman was the director of the Sudan News Agency (SUNA) office in El Fasher, the last major city in Darfur to fall to the RSF. He was one of the final sources of verified information from inside the siege. When RSF forces captured El Fasher on October 26, 2025, Suleiman disappeared. By December 2025, the Committee to Protect Journalists confirmed he had been killed. His death cut off one of the last windows into what was happening in North Darfur.
Al-Nour Suleiman Al-Nour died from injuries sustained when RSF forces shelled his home in El Fasher. He had worked as a correspondent for Al Salam Radio, as an editor and presenter for Al Fasher Radio, and most recently as Media Director at the Governor's Office. The Sudanese Journalists Syndicate described him as "a respected colleague and a man of good character."
Halima Idris Salim, a correspondent for Sudan Bukra, was run over by an RSF vehicle while she was reporting on conditions at a hospital in Omdurman. She was doing her job. It killed her.
Adam Issac Minan was kidnapped by RSF forces on April 5, 2026, just last month in Kutum, North Darfur. The CPJ issued an urgent call for his release on May 7, 2026.
As of writing, he has not been found. At least eight other journalists remain missing, their families unable to determine whether they are alive.
"The war in Sudan is not just a conflict of arms. It is a battle for truth. The silencing of the pen is a tragedy for the Sudanese people and a threat to democracy everywhere."
— KAMAL ELSADIG, EDITOR IN CHIEF, RADIO DABANGA
El Fasher: The Information Blackout Inside a Genocide
The fall of El Fasher on October 26, 2025 was not just a military event. It was a deliberate information blackout imposed on what the United Nations has since concluded bears "the hallmarks of genocide." The RSF cut communications to the city. Most journalists fled or went silent. Those who stayed faced detention, torture, sexual violence, and death.
A UN fact-finding mission concluded in February 2026 that RSF forces committed genocide against non-Arab indigenous ethnic groups in El Fasher — the Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit peoples. The mission documented at least 6,000 killings in the first three days alone. At the Rashid dormitory of El Fasher University, RSF forces opened fire on approximately 1,000 civilians sheltering there on October 26, killing around 500 people. Around 600 people, including 50 children, were executed the same day in other university facilities.
The reason we know these numbers at all is because of satellite imagery, cell phone videos, and the testimony of survivors who managed to escape. The on-the-ground journalists who should have been documenting this were hunted. Journalist Muammar Ibrahim was detained by RSF forces on the very day El Fasher fell — October 26 — and his whereabouts remain unknown seven months later. What "90% of Media Destroyed"
Actually Means When the SJS says 90% of Sudan's media institutions have been damaged or destroyed, it means: newspapers that no longer print. Radio stations whose equipment was looted. TV studios used as military positions. Journalists whose sources inside conflict zones have been killed or disappeared.
It means that the RSF can carry out a massacre at El Fasher University and face no journalist recording it in real time. It means that 27,000 people can reportedly be killed in the first three days of the El Fasher massacre — per the governor of Darfur's own estimate — and the first international headlines do not appear for days.
It means the perpetrators of war crimes in Sudan operate in a darkness they have deliberately engineered. And it means that publications like Khartoon Magazine — doing the work of sourcing, verifying, and distributing information about what is happening — are not optional. They are the difference between the world knowing and the world not knowing.
Professional Blackmail: The Pressure No One Reports
The killing of journalists is the most visible form of press suppression. But it is not the most common. The SJS documents a pattern that is harder to photograph and harder to report: systematic campaigns of intimidation designed to enforce silence without leaving a body.
Journalists in Sudan are labeled "agents" if they refuse to publish propaganda for either the SAF or the RSF. Both sides demand that reporters in territory they control produce content that supports their narrative. Refusing means detention. Complying means losing credibility. The space for independent journalism has been compressed to near-zero.
The Sudan government's Ministry of Culture, Information, Antiquities and Tourism issued a directive in May 2026 requiring all media outlets to obtain official operating licenses within one month — or face "legal action." The SJS and Radio Dabanga immediately condemned the directive as a further tool of censorship disguised as administrative process. The ministry called it "restoring professionalism and order to the sector." The journalists who received it called it by its actual name: a threat.
"Ninety percent of Sudanese media institutions have been damaged or completely destroyed. Journalists face intense propaganda pressure from conflict parties and are often labeled as agents if they refuse to publish propaganda for either side."
— SUDANESE JOURNALISTS SYNDICATE, APRIL 2026
Gaza: The Comparison That Must Be Made
Sudan's press freedom crisis exists in a global context of deliberate violence against journalists. In Gaza, the RSF's 2026 World Press Freedom Index reports that more than 220 journalists have been killed by the Israeli army since October 2023, including at least 70 who were killed while actively carrying out their work. Gaza's journalists have faced the systematic destruction of every newsroom in the strip, the targeting of press vehicles and press vests, and a near-total communication blackout imposed by Israel during active military operations.
The parallel between Gaza and Sudan is exact in one dimension: in both places, the parties committing the worst atrocities have worked systematically to eliminate the journalists who could document them. The difference is in the world's response. Gaza's journalists have become symbols of courage recognised globally. Sudan's journalists are still waiting for the world to notice they exist.
That is not a natural or inevitable difference. It is the product of decisions, by international media, by governments, by platforms, by audiences, about which lives and which truths are worth paying attention to.
KHARTOONMAGAZINE ·
Khartoon Magazine exists because of what happens when the press is silenced. We are a publication that reports on Sudan and the Arab world from inside the communities that are living these stories. We are not embedded with either side. We are not funded by any government. We are not interested in the version of events that makes powerful people comfortable.
The journalists named in this article, Taj al-Sir Ahmed Suleiman, Al-Nour Suleiman Al Nour, Halima Idris Salim, Adam Issac Minan, Muammar Ibrahim — were doing exactly what we do. They were trying to make the world see Sudan clearly. They paid for it with their freedom and their lives.
Every time you read KhartoonMagazine, share our articles, or subscribe to our Substack, you are doing something these journalists can no longer do: keeping the record alive. The war on truth in Sudan will only end when the world decides that Sudan's truth matters. We are making that argument every week. We need you to make it with us.
"The war in Sudan is not just a conflict of arms. It is a battle for truth." — Kamal Elsadig, Radio Dabanga
Sudan's journalists are risking everything to get this story out.
Khartoon Magazine brings you verified, in-depth reporting on Sudan and the Arab world — every week on Substack. Free to read. Free to share.