Washington, December 22, 2005—A delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists that met today with the Ethiopian ambassador to the United States expressed outrage at the jailing of at least 16 journalists and demanded their immediate release. “Ethiopia and Eritrea are by far Africa’s worst jailers of journalists in 2005,” CPJ Africa Program Coordinator, Julia…
New York, December 21, 2005—Twenty-one Ethiopian journalists and the president of the Ethiopian Free Press Journalists’ Association were charged today with involvement in an alleged attempt to overthrow the government, according to CPJ sources. Among those charged were five journalists of Ethiopian descent who work in Washington, D.C., for the Voice of America’s Amharic-language service,…
Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by the continued detention of at least 13 journalists who were arrested in a crackdown on the private press following antigovernment protests in early November. These editors and publishers from the private, Amharic-language press, who were identified on a government “wanted” list publicized on state-owned media, have been detained without charge and denied bail. The journalists were jailed along with dozens of opposition and civil society leaders. Your Excellency has threatened to charge these detainees with treason, which is punishable by death in Ethiopia.Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by the continued detention of at least 13 journalists who were arrested in a crackdown on the private press following antigovernment protests in early November. These editors and publishers from the private, Amharic-language press, who were identified on a government “wanted” list publicized on state-owned media, have been detained without charge and denied bail. The journalists were jailed along with dozens of opposition and civil society leaders. Your Excellency has threatened to charge these detainees with treason, which is punishable by death in Ethiopia.
New York, December 12, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists is outraged that two more journalists have been jailed on criminal charges that have been revived since a crackdown on the press in November. The convictions last week relating to articles published up to seven years ago bring the number of journalists now behind bars in…
New York, December 7, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the eight-month jail sentence for criminal libel handed down by the Federal High Court to a journalist already in prison as part of Ethiopia’s ongoing crackdown on the independent media. On Tuesday, the court convicted Wosonseged Gebrekidan, former editor of the Amharic-language weekly Ethiop, of…
New York, December 5, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists is outraged by news that Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaac was returned to jail just two days after being released in mid-November. Isaac is one of 15 Eritrean journalists who have been jailed incommunicado and without charge or forced into extended military service following a September 2001…