You can’t take pictures in/around Juba town.

Without being stopped and harassed. 

Even just walking with a camera in hand…its assumed that you are a journalist and therefore a danger to the public (sic)

And yet we are in our 3^rd year of independence.

A friend of mine was taking a picture of a building under construction. (his friend is the architect so this wasn’t a random building)

A guy comes up to him and tells him, ‘you are being called by that guy’ (across the street)

He goes across the street not realizing that the building he was walking into used to be national security (for the North) pre-independence.

The building has no sign, nobody introduces himself, or even tells him why he was called. Instead…

He spends 4 hrs in a room being questioned over and over again about

-       why he is taking pictures

-       is he a journalist? (the authorities fear and routinely harass journalists)

-       what’s wrong with his hair (he has dreadlocks) and how can a self-respecting man do that with his hair. If anything they should cut his hair.

4 hours. 

The worst part being that if anything had happened to him there would have been no way of knowing where he was.  And also that even after the fact, you cant really try and raise a complaint because nobody there has a name, a tag, there is not supervisor that can be held accountable.

Just a room. And persons issuing threats.

we need to do better.