Ethiopia: Journalists Live in Fear of 'Terror' Law
By Charlayne Hunter-Gault, 20 June 2012
guest column
Nowhere across Africa is the message that its people want a way out of what
I call "the four Ds" - death, disease, disaster and despair - more
resounding than among the continent's journalists.
In nation after nation, they are attempting to inform their people of their
rights and encourage them to hold their governments accountable. For that,
many of them are being held accountable in the most draconian ways.
I have seen this first hand in Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe's regime has
long attempted to conceal the repression of its people. Journalists have
fought back and continue to yell truth to power, although they still face
the prospect of jail as a consequence.
And most recently, I have seen it in Ethiopia, where Eskinder Nega, a
journalist I visited seven years ago in Kalati Prison, along with his
pregnant wife, Serkalem Fasil (who gave birth in prison) is back there on
charges of terrorism. What appears to have been his crime is that he also
continues to tell, if not yell, truth to power, although the government is
actually prosecuting him for what they say is his membership in a terrorist
network that advocates violence. As proof, during his trial they showed a
video in which he questioned whether an Arab Spring-type uprising could ever
happen in Ethiopia.
The government has empowered itself to prosecute what they see as dissent
like this with a sweeping anti-terrorism law that is, effectively, a weapon
that can be used against anyone daring to criticize the government in a way
the government doesn't like.
One journalist who published Eskinder's statement in court was also
convicted, but got a suspended four-month sentence. Dozens of journalists
have fled into exile and six have been charged with terrorism in absentia,
according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
When I visited Ethiopia earlier this month with a colleague from the CPJ and
the continent-wide project called the African Media Initiative, journalists
we met with told us they all live in fear, calling the terrorism law a "game
changer." One foreigner working in Ethiopia told me: "There is a red line.
The problem is, we don't know where it is."
When we met Simon Bereket, Ethiopia's Minister of Information, he defended
the incarceration of Eskinder and the seven other journalists locked up with
him on the grounds that they were involved in terrorism. In a polite but
firm dissent, he said neither Eskinder nor any of the other journalists were
in prison for what they wrote.
When we asked to see Eskinder and the others in prison, we were told that it
was not likely and that turned out to be the case. But his wife, Serkalem,
who was recently in New York receiving on Eskinder's behalf a prestigious
freedom of the press award from PEN America, told us when we met her in
Addis that Eskinder had asked her to tell us that he was in no way connected
with any terrorist group-there or in the United States.
She also told us that he said that if the price of telling the truth was
imprisonment, he could live with that. Of course, when the verdict is handed
down - which is scheduled to happen Thursday - Eskinder could be sentenced
to life in prison or death.
Part of the reason for my involvement with journalists and their issues in
Ethiopia and other parts of the continent is to try to present a
much-maligned continent in a light different to that in which it is often
portrayed elsewhere in the world: in a light that makes it clear that
Africans want as much as anyone else to make choices about themselves and
their children in an informed way, and that they have the same hopes and
aspirations for themselves, their families and their communities as do
people in democracies the world over.
Imperfect as many democracies are, their governments do not put people in
jail for words that come out of their mouths and the freedom-loving desires
that live in their hearts. That's why, as an American, I hope that my
countrymen and women who have that right should get on Ethiopia's case. They
should insist that a U.S. government which is pledged to ensure those rights
in America should also help ensure them in Ethiopia. And I hope they will be
joined by freedom-loving people all over the world, including on the African
continent.
But Ethiopia stands as a partner with the United States, in particular, in
fighting REAL terrorists, including Al Qaeda, in a strategic part of the
world. Surely the economic assistance the U.S. has provided Ethiopia in the
past and the $350 million in assistance it is asking for in 2013 gives it
some weight in pressing Addis Ababa to live up to the same principles
enshrined in their constitution as in ours?
Freedom of speech is a crucial cornerstone of democracy. It should not be a
death sentence.
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Received on Wed Jun 20 2012 - 09:35:07 EDT
