Sudanese Guerillas Launch PR for Radio
By Martin Schoech
January 22, 1999
with Nick Grace, CRW Washington Bureau
Thanks to Roger Tidy, United Kingdom
The Voice of Freedom and Renewal, which can be heard throughout Europe on short wave, is now being promoted by its sponsor group, the Sudanese Alliance Forces (SAF).
Up until this point, the only known address to potentially contact the station was one in Canada, which the editors of CRW located through the registration records of the SAF's webpage: http://www.safsudan.com.
Since this discovery, the SAF has published telephone numbers of foreign representatives throughout the world.
CRW Contributor Roger Tidy discovered not only a dedicated homepage for the grey clandestine radio station, but also an interesting communique that offers insight into the strategies and goals sought through such efforts.
The Voice of Freedom and Renewal can be accessed at:
http://www.safsudan.com/broadcast/cast1.html
with a welcome message and links to international broadcasters.
Wahid Watani of the SAF writes within the communique, "As you all know your new Radio station has started broadcasting , so a new era of fighting the ruthless NIF Regime has started , where all of us as well as our real friends are expected to participate. The idea is very ideal as it will be deploying an effective mass media, if used in an effective professional way , by that I mean following the path of giving accurate up to-date and real life problems information, touching the needs and aspirations of our Great Nation. To accomplish the above mentioned, it should have a clear strategy of being credible, accurate, precise and target oriented. Credibality is very vital at both Short Run ( Tobbling Nif regime) and Long Run (Convincing our people with ideas and programs of SAF), the latter is very crucial , as at present very little is said about SAF by NIF media or other Parties ,(i.e SAF for obvious reasons did not sign the memorandum submitted to El-Bashir by Internal opposition forces - as being a known SAF member is a very serious crime, this why most of internal SAF activities appears to very slow _ Activation of inside activities is beyond the scope of this brief message, I hope it would be discussed extensively at a later stage at a wider platform
THE STRATEGY
As mentioned earlier our strategy should evolve around being credible and taking in account the following:
1- Transmission of up to date information from it's primary sources (News papers , T.V stations, Local incidents ( again the issue of internal support is vital)
2- Following psychological war against the regime (revealing it's corruption , lies) as well as stating current internal incidents on daily basis, so that people inside Sudan feel that every action by the regime is monitored, leading to increasing moral and disolving the seige of fear
3- Having a clear policy with regard to our political rivals, evolving around opening and encourging constuctive, decent dialoge, and refraining from any type of short sighted envey oriented attitutes.
WHAT IS EXPECTED FROM US
We should be a good source of information encourage others to participate effectively feed back.
Proposed Sources of Information
Daily arabic News papers
Internet Radio Stations, e.g B.B.C live on the internet at http://www.bbc.co.uk/arabic
the former has got live arabic transmission and arabic briefing of daily British News papers."
Although the efforts of the SAF to promote their radio station are clearly spawning, short wave listeners should encourage them to use verification cards and letters as an effective public relations tool.
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