Ethiopia

2013

  
Woubshet Taye's wife Berhane Tesfaye and their son accepted an award on behalf of the imprisoned journalist. (CPJ/Sue Valentine)

Africa’s journalists honor jailed editor Woubshet Taye

Journalists and media owners across Africa gave Ethiopian journalist Woubshet Taye a standing ovation in Cape Town on Saturday night at the CNN MultiChoice African Journalist Awards 2013, but he wasn’t there to see it. Instead his wife and son accepted the Free Press Award on his behalf. Part of the citation for the award…

Read More ›

Ethiopian journalists Eskinder Nega and Reeyot Alemu. (Lennart Kjörling and IWMF)

Sakharov and the fight for a free press in Ethiopia

In 1968, Andrei Sakharov braved censorship and personal risk in the Soviet Union to give humanity an honest and timeless declaration of conscience. That same year, Ethiopia’s most prominent dissenter, Eskinder Nega, was born. In January 1981, a year into Sakharov’s exile in the closed city of Gorky, Reeyot Alemu, another fierce, Ethiopian free thinker,…

Read More ›

The dangerous neighborhood of Eastleigh is home to some exiled journalists. (AP)

Exiled journalists in risky places need helping hand

It was well past mid-day in Eastleigh, a shanty district on the east side of Nairobi, Kenya. The billows of dust rising from the rock-scarred road showed a government that had long lost interest in the neighborhood. A young man, struggling with horribly dry conditions, was fighting with his patrons. “Welahi, today’s khat is so…

Read More ›

Eskinder Nega is still in jail after refusing to sign a false confession in exchange for freedom. (Eskinder family)

UN panel: Eskinder Nega jailing violates international law

Authorities in Ethiopia describe Eskinder Nega, a prominent columnist and government critic jailed since September 2011 on vague terrorism charges, as a dangerous individual bent on violent revolution. However, in an opinion handed down in 2012–publicized only this week by Washington, D.C.-based legal advocacy group Freedom Now–a United Nations panel of five independent experts ruled…

Read More ›

Journalist Assistance helps record number in 2012

An increase in press freedom violations last year created a surge of need among journalists, driving a record number of assistance cases for CPJ’s Journalist Assistance Program in 2012. More than three-quarters of the 195 journalists who received support during the year came from East Africa and the Middle East and North Africa, reflecting the…

Read More ›

2013