Ethiopia / Africa

  
Police fire tear gas during a festival in Ethiopia's Oromia region. After months of protests, authorities have imposed a state of emergency that includes blocking access to social media. (Reuters/Tiksa Negeri)

Ethiopia’s state of emergency cuts lines of communication and puts bloggers at risk of arrest

On October 4, I heard that my friend Natnael Feleke had not returned home even though it was approaching midnight in Ethiopia. Family and friends were discussing where to search for the blogger, who had only been released 11 months earlier from the notorious Kilinto prison, where he was held for 16 months over his…

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Protesters in Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, raise the Oromo protest sign ahead of an October 2, 2016, stampede that left more than 50 people dead after police fired teargas and warning shots to disperse the crowd. (Reuters/Tiksa Negeri)

Police arrest prominent Ethiopian blogger

New York, October 3, 2016 – Ethiopian authorities should immediately and unconditionally release blogger Seyoum Teshome, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Police arrested Teshome on October 1, according to press accounts and opposition activists.

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CPJ Newsletter: Exhibit of jailed photographer’s work moves to Photoville, journalist released from jail, and we join our partners at the UN

October edition Next stop for exhibit of Shawkan’s work: Photoville In mid-September, CPJ partnered with the Bronx Documentary Center to hold an exhibition of photographs taken by Mahmoud Abou Zeid, or Shawkan, a freelance journalist who has been imprisoned in Egypt since August 2013. Many of Shawkan’s photos–from protests and celebrations in Tahrir Square to…

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Ethiopian journalist Yusuf Getachew released from jail

New York, September 10, 2016–Ethiopian authorities today released Yusuf Getachew, editor-in-chief of Ye Muslimoch Guday (Muslim Affairs), who has been imprisoned since his arrest in July 2012, a relative of the journalist told CPJ. Yusuf was freed on the day that several prisoners were released as part of a presidential pardon for Ethiopia’s new year…

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Ethiopian police detain journalists reporting on drought, escort them back to capital

Ethiopian police on August 8, 2016, detained three journalists reporting on the effects of a severe drought in the country before escorting them back to Addis Ababa with a warning not to work outside the capital, the Foreign Correspondents’ Association of Ethiopia said in a statement.

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Ethiopian police arrest Somaliland journalist

Nairobi, July 1, 2016 – Ethiopian authorities should immediately release a television journalist from the semi-autonomous republic of Somaliland, Muktar Nuh Ibrahim, who has been held since June 19, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

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Heroines for Press Freedom

Late on the evening of September 16, 2000, 31-year-old Ukrainian investigative journalist Georgy Gongadze left a colleague’s house in Kiev and headed home to where his wife and young daughters awaited him. He never made it.

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In Ethiopia, journalist detained since 2013 handed jail sentence

New York, March 11, 2016–Solomon Kebede, the managing editor of the now-defunct Ethiopian paper Ye Muslimoch Guday (Muslim Affairs), was sentenced to prison Thursday, more than three years after being jailed on anti-terrorism charges. CPJ was not immediately able to reconcile conflicting reports on the exact length of the prison sentence.

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Ethiopian police detain journalists, translator for 24 hours

Ethiopian federal police detained Bloomberg correspondent William Davison, freelance journalist Jacey Fortin, and a translator they had hired near the eastern town of Awash at around 12:40 p.m. on March 3, according to the Foreign Correspondents Association of East Africa.

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Reeyot Alemu embraces Al-Jazeera journalist Mohamed Fahmy at CPJ's 2015 International Press Freedom Awards. Both were freed from prison last year. (Getty Images/Michael Nagle)

‘They wanted me to say I was wrong’: Freed Ethiopian journalist on why 1,500 days in jail failed to silence her

Reeyot Alemu, an Ethiopian journalist who worked for the independent weekly Feteh, spent almost 1,500 days in prison after being arrested in June 2011 and charged with terrorism in 2012. She was released unexpectedly in July.

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