https://arab.news/nywc7
- Mohammed Amin was due to attend the One World Media Awards, where he is nominated for Journalist of the Year for his coverage of the Sudan war
LONDON: Sudanese journalist Mohammed Amin has been denied a UK visa to attend an awards ceremony at which he has been nominated for a top prize recognizing his reporting from Sudan.
Amin, a freelance correspondent for Middle East Eye, was due to attend the One World Media Awards, where he is nominated for Journalist of the Year.
The Home Office refused his application for an eight-day visa, saying it was not satisfied he had a genuine reason to visit or that he would leave the country at the end of his stay.
“There’s a contradiction between British journalists, who consider what is happening in Sudan, and the UK government, which organizes conferences about Sudan (in London) but denies visas for journalists,” he said, adding that he had visited the UK multiple times previously.
Amin, whose trip was being sponsored by his employer, said he had to travel to the British High Commission in Uganda to be interviewed in person as part of his application process.
The Home Office said there was no right of appeal or administrative review against the decision.
Chinwe Kalu-Uma, One World Media’s interim director, said: “It is deeply disappointing that Mohammed, nominated for our Journalist of the Year Award, who has at great risk continued to report from inside Sudan so that the world might pay attention, has been denied a visa to travel to London to receive that recognition.”
Amin specializes in geopolitics and human rights abuses in Sudan, South Sudan and northeast Africa.
He is known for his frontline coverage of the 2019 removal of President Omar Al-Bashir, the 2021 military coup, and the Wagner Group massacres in the Central African Republic and Sudan.
In 2022, he won the Martin Adler Prize, awarded by the Rory Peck Trust to freelance journalists who demonstrate exceptional courage.