Eritrea
2009
CPJ’s 2009 prison census: Freelance journalists under fire
New York, December 8, 2009—Freelancers now make up nearly 45 percent of all journalists jailed worldwide, a dramatic recent increase that reflects the evolution of the global news business, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. In its annual census of imprisoned journalists, CPJ found a total of 136 reporters, editors, and photojournalists behind bars…
September 18, 2001, in Eritrea: A memory that never fades
It feels like it happened just yesterday. It was 7 a.m. on an average day in September in Asmara, Eritrea. My brain was still reshuffling the information I had gathered about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center a week earlier. I was writing an article on it for the next issue of Setit,…
Press, politics at center of Eritrean mock trial
Articles published in Eritrea’s now-banned private newspapers are at the center of a mock political trial being filmed as an educational documentary this week at Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. Inside a courtroom on the sprawling Tempe, Ariz., campus, a judge of the High Court of Eritrea presides dispassionately, international observers lean into translation…
Eritrean president slams ‘CIA-financed’ media
Last week, President Isaias Afeworki of Eritrea, Africa’s leading jailer of journalists, discussed press freedom during an extensive interview with Swedish broadcaster TV4. Afeworki, a revered guerrilla commander who led this Red Sea country to nationhood in 1993, banned Eritrea’s budding private media in 2001 and threw journalists in secret prisons without charge or trial.…
Long held in secret Eritrean jail, Isaac reported in hospital
New York, February 5, 2009–Eritrean authorities must disclose the medical condition and care being provided to jailed journalist Dawit Isaac, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today following unofficial reports saying that he was hospitalized. CPJ points out that the well-being of the long-jailed Isaac, an Eritrean with Swedish citizenship, is the responsibility of the…