“In my country, working in the media is very dangerous, very difficult. I have been jailed three times in the last year.” This is how the Ethiopian journalist Meaza Mohamed thanked the award International Women of Courage delivered by the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, on March 8. In his statements, he made it clear that press freedom in ethiopia is in low hours. So low that the latest analysis published by Reporters Without Borders ranks Ethiopia 114 out of 180 countries surveyed (thirteen places below compared to 2021) in its press freedom index. The recent war in Tigray and the ethnic conflicts that have engulfed the government of Abiy Ahmed are the main causes of this debacle.
Freedom of expression is under serious threat in Ethiopia. Meaza Mohamed and Reporters Without Borders say so, but This is confirmed by the 19 journalists arrested in May 2022 and the 25 media outlets that have suffered criminal lawsuits from the Ethiopian Media Authority. At the moment when it seemed that the African country was taking flight and leaving behind the journalistic authoritarianism that characterized the governments prior to Abiy Ahmed’s, the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner has swerved in his policies and resorted to that who criticized those who came before him. Let us remember that two Swedish journalists, Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson, were arrested, accused of terrorism and sentenced to eleven years in prison in 2012 (although a year later they were released), while at that time it was determined that 79 Ethiopian journalists had been forced in exile since 2001 to avoid imprisonment.
Amnesty International Regional Director Flavia Mwangovya announced a week ago that “The Ethiopian authorities have blocked access in some areas to social platforms such as Facebook, Telegram, TikTok and YouTube for a month. Therefore, the authorities continue to violate the individual’s rights to free expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and share information.” In a world where anyone can be an information agent, be it by sharing videos and images or expressing opinions on social networks, these restrictions imposed by the Government do not only affect communication professionals, but all citizens who have a smartphone.
Abiy Ahmed seemed to put an end to all that. A new media law passed in 2021 offered a broader legal basis for journalists, where defamation was decriminalized and the confidentiality of journalistic sources protected. A law that has been overshadowed by another, the terrorism law, in which hate speech, an opaque term and too broad to be accurate, can be punished with severe prison terms and used against journalists who disagree with the speech governmental. Meaza Mohammed, who has dedicated her efforts to denounce the injustices suffered by the Amhara ethnic group at the hands of the Government, has been affected by these legal measures, since the Amhara region has an armed wing that (sometimes) directly clashes with the government army.
The Prime Minister’s efforts to establish press freedom in Ethiopia were also frustrated by the Tigray war (2020-2022), which originated in the country’s political riots and has claimed an approximate figure of 600,000 deaths. The journalist who writes this article was recently in Tigray and he was detained for twelve hours and interrogated by an Army colonel, after being shaken and threatened by a group of furious soldiers, for which he has been able to see first-hand the risks to which the profession is exposed in this African country. In the framework of the Tigray war, several local journalists have been assassinated under unresolved circumstances.while a reporter from New York Times He was expelled from the country for not sharing the editorial line required by the Government. Similarly, media coverage of the conflict has been nil since Abiy Ahmed banned journalists from entering Tigray, a restriction that is still in place today.
Abiy Ahmed is now facing a complex and difficult peace process. Observers believe that the peace signed in Pretoria gives wings to a resumption of the conflict in the future, awakening that old Taoist question that questions whether good is really done when peace is placed in a serious conflict, leaving residues of the conflict. That Reporters Without Borders determine that it is the Ethiopian journalists themselves who censor themselves, either out of fear for their physical safety or due to ethnic and political pressures, determines that there will be no peace in Ethiopia until full freedom returns to its means. Although freedom of expression is guaranteed under the Ethiopian Constitution, it would seem that the Constitution is of no use as long as a range of laws are developed that directly contradict this statement.
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