For the better part of the last 20 years, Tedros Menghistu has been a refugee, forced to flee his Red Sea homeland of Eritrea not once, but twice—first as a young man displaced by war in the early 1990s, and then as a professional journalist escaping political censorship and military conscription a decade later. Menghistu is also one of a handful of enterprising former professional journalists uprooted from Eritrea who have started independent news outlets in cities such as Houston, Toronto, and London. As outlets for a range of views suppressed by the government in
Eritrea, these upstart media platforms work under intimidation
from supporters of the Eritrean government.