South Sudan may have a love-hate relationship with the media, banning it one minute, calling it back the next – but it is desperate for help and needs media attention right now.
Sister Yudith Pereira-Rico, associate executive director of Solidarity with South Sudan says her organization is promoting the hashtag #SouthSudanWeCare on social media.
Their aim: to show the South Sudanese people that they will not be overlooked.
“The people there feel they are forgotten. There is no media attention and they always tell us, ‘Please, don’t forget to speak about us,’” Pereira-Rico says.
The people’s fear that they’ll be forgotten is not unfounded. Many journalists have died while working in South Sudan since the crisis began in 2013.
Then on Monday last week the South Sudanese government banned 20 foreign journalists from working in the country.
Elijah Alier, the head of the country’s media authority accused the journalists of writing “unsubstantiated and unrealistic” stories that “insulted or degraded South Sudan and its people”.
The government reversed this decision last Friday.
Alfred Taban, a veteran local journalist says after being told the bans are wrong and illegal, the government pledged unhindered media coverage.
“This time of national dialogue is for healing, reconciliation by all people and it cannot be possible without media support,” he explained.
This will be good news to Pereira-Rico.
She says she has spent the past two decades working in the poorest parts of West Africa “and yet I’ve never seen the poverty like there is in South Sudan.
“My first time in South Sudan, in Malakal, I wasn’t able to sing ‘Hallelujah’ in church” having seen the situation of the people. “Now, more and more, I can see that God is here.”
Pereira-Rico says sometimes she and her colleagues feel powerless when faced with so many people in need, “but just being there” can offer comfort, she says.
“A challenge we have as Christians is believing in the resurrection in these situations, knowing that there is a good end for human history.”
- The Peninsula
- Crux
- Image: BBC
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