Ethiopian journalists must choose between being locked up or locked out

December 29, 2014

(CPJ) A sharp increase in the number of Ethiopian journalists fleeing into exile has been recorded by the Committee to Protect Journalists in the past 12 months. More than 30–twice the number of exiles CPJ documented in 2012 and 2013 combined–were forced to leave after the government began a campaign of arrests. In October, Nicole Schilit of CPJ’s Journalist Assistance program and Martial Tourneur of partner group Reporters Without Borders traveled to Nairobi in Kenya to meet some of those forced to flee.

Journalists who fled to Nairobi over security fears perform a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony in one of the cramped apartments they share. (CPJ/Nicole Schilit)

The group of reporters, photographers, and editors we met had all been forced to make a tough decision that has affected them and their families–a life in exile or prison. All of the journalists spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity, out of concern for their safety. During meetings to discuss their cases, one of them told us: “I hope one day I can bring my family. Maybe in the future. I want to secure myself first. Now is not secure.”

Since July, a large number of Ethiopian journalists have left behind their families, homes, and a steady income to seek safety. The reason for this sharp increase is a government crackdown on the independent media. In January, the state-controlled Ethiopian Press Agency and Ethiopian News Agency carried out a study to “assess the role of [seven] magazines in the nation’s peace, democracy and development.” The results were illustrated in two charts that claimed the magazines were promoting terrorism and damaging the economy.

One of the exiled journalists CPJ met in Nairobi holds up a newspaper report on a study criticizing independent publications. (CPJ/Nicole Schilit)

The study was followed by a series of arrests and charges of journalists from a range of publications, as well as those associated with the Zone 9 blogging collective. In July six bloggers and three journalists werecharged with terrorism. On June 25, 20 journalists at the state-run Oromia Radio and Television Organization were dismissedwithout explanation. In August, the Ministry of Justice announced that six publications were beingcharged with publishing false information, inciting violence, and undermining public confidence in the government. Managers at three publications weresentenced in absentia to three-year jail terms for “inciting the public by spreading false information.” And in October, Temesghen Desalegn of Feteh (Justice) magazine wassentenced to three years’ imprisonment for defamation and incitement.

With the threat of imprisonment hanging over Ethiopia’s press, many journalists decided to flee. Most left without much notice. Some knew Ethiopians who had moved to Nairobi months or even years earlier, and were able to contact them before leaving their homes. Others arrived without having any basic knowledge of the city, and had to find help with everything from registering as a refugee with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to finding a place to stay.

CPJ’s Journalist Assistance program has had a steady flow of requests from journalists in Ethiopia and other parts of East Africa since the program began in 2001, but we have never seen numbers like this. With so many journalists displaced, it was important that CPJ identified their most urgent needs and challenges before deciding how best to support them.

The exiled journalists that CPJ and its partner group met included journalists who worked for several independent publications, as well as freelancers and founding members of theEthiopian Journalists Forum (EJF). Not all of the journalists were facing charges, but they said they had experienced harassment, intimidation, and threats of imprisonment over their reporting.

CPJ “hero” Dawit Kebede says group is tool for Western hegemony

December 29, 2014

by Tamiru Ayele

The managing editor of Awramba Times and former CPJ “press freedom hero” has accused the Committee to Protect Journalists of being one of the tools of imposing “Western hegemonic ambition” and a single ideology on targeted countries like Ethiopia and China.

Dawit Kebede, who was one of the four recipients of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award in 2010, launched the scathing attack against CPJ and leading international human rights groups in a recent interview with ETV, the state-run propaganda outlet. He claimed that organizations such as CPJ, Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Oakland Institute and the International Crisis Group are tools of advancing Western hegemony. “These organizations are part of an overall allegiance to control the world under one single ideology,” he said.

“I do not endorse or reject these organizations 100 percent. But whether we like it or not, they have their own agenda,” he said. He alleged that these advocacy groups exaggerate small incidents and try to put enormous pressure on countries where there are ideological deviations and political economic differences with the United States.

The ruling TPLF regime routinely uses the same line of argument in a bid to discredit international human rights groups that expose atrocities and gross human rights violations in Ethiopia. Contrary to the preposterous claim, TPLF abandoned its Albanian communist ideology over two decades ago. The regime has no tangible ideological differences with Western governments that pump billions of dollars to Ethiopia in the form of foreign aid.

According to the former “press freedom hero”, CPJ and other human rights organizations and their reports are tainted with ideological prejudice. “These institutions have their own agenda and it is intimately related with their survival. As I said earlier, it is related with the desire to impose Western hegemonic ambition on the rest of the world by attacking those countries that do not follow their ideological lines,” he said.

He also asserted that the annual U.S. State Department report on human rights is nothing but a summary of reports published by these Western think tanks and human rights groups that have vested ideological interests. He mentioned Survival International, which defends the rights of endangered indigenous ethnic groups, as an example of overreaching Western interference and alleged that the group tries to impede development and investment in areas like the Southern Omo as if it was more concerned for these indigenous groups than the government.

But Dawit further stated that the reports published by these international advocacy groups have little impact except being used for the benefit of those who tend to use them for propaganda outputs. When Dawit Kebede was jailed in the aftermath of the 2005 election turmoil, CPJ, Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, among others, took the lead in campaigning for his release at a global level.

The online publication Awramba Times is widely criticised among Ethiopian activists for changing into a copycat of the worst state-run propaganda outlets. A Washington DC-based activist says that Dawit is just contradicting himself and the reality on the ground in his effort to please the TPLF regime he had once condemned as oppressive.

“It is a well known fact that the situation in Ethiopia is worsening. Despite the fact that he is now opportunistically attacking those who have honored and defended him, he is still receiving funds from the same Western organizations in the name of promoting press freedom,” he noted.

“We all know that Dawit Kebede has made up with his former tormentors. That is why this is a typical case of an opportunist biting the fingers that fed him,” he said. According to the activist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Dawit has received a substantial amount of money from CPJ, Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) just within the last few years.

“It is public knowledge that he is still receiving over 40,000 US dollars annually from NED in the name of promoting press freedom. If these organizations have demonic and destructive ideological interests, as he alleges, why is he taking their money under false pretenses?” he asked.

In his acceptance speech at the CPJ press freedom awarding ceremony held in New York in 2010, Dawit had vowed that he would give his whole life for press freedom and would never be intimidated by dictators or their agents.

“My country receives millions of American taxpayer dollars to fight terrorism in the Horn of Africa, but under our anti-terrorism law, I risk 25 years in prison if I interview certain opposition politicians,” Dawit had told the CPJ gathering in New York.

CPJ, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, among others, factually insist that Ethiopia under the TPLF is one of the worst repressive countries in the world where journalists, dissidents and activists face trumped up terrorism offenses, torture and vicious attacks. Dawit’s former colleague, Woubishet Taye, who was the deputy editor of the defunct Awramba Times newspaper, is languishing in jail sentenced to 14 years behind bars for being a “terrorist”.

Dawit, who had fled Ethiopia in November 2011 after closing down his newspaper, completed a full circle when he returned home within two years, expressed his happiness for being able to work more freely as a journalist in Ethiopia. He said he had felt a thousand times more oppressed among the Ethiopian Diaspora that largely oppose TPLF’s ethnic-based brutal dictatorship ruling Ethiopia.

According to CPJ, 2014 is one of the worst years for Ethiopian journalists. “A state crackdown on independent publications and bloggers in Ethiopia this year more than doubled the number of journalists imprisoned to 17 from seven the previous year, and prompted several journalists to flee into exile,” CPJ says in its latest report. In the last few months alone, a dozen of journalists have been jailed and nearly 30 Ethiopian journalists were forced into exile after the regime filed terrorism charges against them and the publications they worked for.

Meanwhile, in his latest online posting, Dawit posted celebratory reports from Dedebit, a place where the ruling TPLF junta launched its violent insurretion forty years ago to secede Tigray from the rest of Ethiopia. After it toppled Mengistu’s military junta, TPLF is widely condemned for imposing a brutally oppressive and exploitative ethnic-based Apartheid on the majority of Ethiopians.

“I am now exceedingly happy with what I do more than I can express it in words,” Dawit told ETV, now renamed Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC). Dawit says regardless of what his critics say, he is only practising journalism in an “impartial and professional” manner.

Ethiopia: Trafficking Beyond Borders

December 30, 2014

by Lulama Moyo
Human trafficking is a huge issue that plagues Ethiopian communities. But trafficking beyond the country’s borders has added more complexity to this issue. Many women, men, and children from Ethiopia have been subjected to forced labor and exploitation of all kinds. They are taken from Ethiopia and are brought to countries mainly in the Middle East as well as countries like Egypt, Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia, Libya, and Yemen. Countries in the Middle East have have been found to have a large percent of Ethiopian females enslaved there. According the research thesis by Elias Ashene called, “Trafficking of Ethiopian Women and Girls to the Middle East”, there is early evidence of illegal movement of Ethiopian women. Ashene has found that that between 1996 and 1998 there were 2,247 legal immigrants from Ethiopia in Middle Eastern countries. But by 1999 there were 17,000 Ethiopians found in Lebanon alone and by 2003 there were 25,000. Ashene concludes that this large increase in numbers is due to illegal means. As human trafficking and modern slavery in Ethiopia grow in impact, so does the Ethiopian governments denial. According to an article in the Ethiopian Press Herald entitled, “Ethiopian Human Trafficking Victims Predicament”, the government would rather claim that all movement of Ethiopian people to the Middle East is voluntary even with the evidence that it isn’t.

The main reason Ethiopian women have been lured into domestic slave jobs is by looking for better jobs under false pretenses. There is a frequent circuit of trafficking through the Ethio-Sudan border. Women are continually misled by promise of legitimate housekeeping jobs with wealth Sudanese businessmen. A woman who returned from being trafficked in Dubai revealed that she knew of women who were forced to work in Sudan after being told they were in transit to Bahrain (IOM, Endeshaw). The route that traffickers bring people from Ethiopia is through the Sinai Desert. Many of the trafficked women are taken to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. Narrative from an interviewed woman who barely escaped death from trafficking is quoted saying this about her experience:

“When I left my village, I was confident I would reach Khartoum safe and find a very good job…I was thinking just how hard I would work and help my poor parents who were in problem to cover their basic expenses. I was dreaming about the successful and joyful life I expected in my new country.”

“They said ‘take off your coloth!…I said ‘No – so they beat me up severely and forced me to have sex with them.”

“When he asked me: give me the money in your pocket? I said no…So he beat me on my face with iron pipe and dragged me away. I don’t know what then happened. When I opened my eyes I found myself in a hospital taking a medical treatment. And the doctor told me that I was even stapped with knife.”

- Workie Endalkachew narrating for Betre Yacob’s article, “A Shocking Tragedy Behind Human Trafficking in Ethiopia: One Woman’s Horrific Story”.

Workie’s words illustrate the gruesome reality that many trafficked people face. As I have found more information on cross-border human trafficking, I learn that migration plays a huge role. Besides people choosing to leave Ethiopia to seek better opportunities, many are forced to do this as refugees and forced migrants. As Ethiopians journey to different countries with the hopes of starting a new life they are taken for ransom and/or trafficked. An example of this is the migration of Ethiopian to Saudi Arabia via Yemen. Ethiopians are smuggled by small boats to Yemen where they believe they will continue their journey to Saudi Arabia. But as revealed in Human Trafficking of Ethiopians to Yemen, smugglers often turn on Ethiopian travelers and rob them of their money. If they don’t have money they are held for ransom. If their families are unable to pay the ransom they are taken to torture camps where they are beaten, raped, blinded, and often murdered. Because of the tremendously high corruption, lack of solid government, and large rate of gangs, trafficking is easily done in Yemen. Accounts from young girls that are featured in the YouTube clip reveal that Yemeni military are responsible for some of the trafficking that goes on. The military sold women to gangs, rapists, and torture camps, and sometimes raped women themselves.

The human trafficking of Ethiopians to different countries is a devastating realty. It adds a different dimension of how to understand trafficking in the country. Because people leave Ethiopia under so many different circumstances it’s hard to develop statistics and create data of the trafficking. Having found out that Ethiopia’s government has little to no policies about trafficking, I am frustrated. It’s vital that they acknowledge how much human trafficking, kidnapping, and slavery is ravaging their communities. If policies end up being created it will be important for the government to not one consider the issues that are going on in Ethiopia, but they will need to consider the cross-border trafficking. In this post I have uncovered what it means for Ethiopians to be trafficked in different countries. You will receive a more in-depth look at the experiences of children and women that are trafficked from my blog-mates.

ECADF