In Ethiopia, prime minister's words, actions not in step

Ethiopia pushes Kenyan TV to drop
report on rebels

By Mohamed Hassim Keita/Africa Research Associate

August

, 2009 (CPJ) -

Last week, the Ethiopian

government tried to force

private Kenyan broadcaster

Nation Television

(NTV)

drop a four-part exclusive

report on separatist rebels

in southern Ethiopia. NTV

aired the first two parts of

"Inside Rebel Territory:

Rag-Tag Fighters of the Oromo Liberation Front," which led
Ethiopia's ambassador to Kenya to accuse the Nation Media Group of
giving a platform to a terrorist organization, the daily Nation reported.
The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), whose Web site is among several
authorities block in Ethiopia, is fighting for greater autonomy for the
Oromos, the largest ethnic group in the south of the vast Horn of
Africa nation.

"Clearly, officials at the Ethiopian Embassy did not want NTV to air
this program. We repeatedly explained to them that this is not
possible," Linus Kaikai, NTV's managing editor of broadcast news
told me today. The Kenyan Foreign Affairs Ministry was also involved
in attempting to get the station to drop the story, he said. "No
demands have been agreed to," Kaikai added, saying that the final two
parts will air tonight and Tuesday.

The Ethiopian administration, whose leaders were once guerilla
fighters allied with the OLF, has sought to censor international media
outlets' coverage of rebel groups. In 2008, authorities accused Qatar-
based satellite network Al-Jazeera of "direct and indirect assistance to
terrorist organizations" after the station aired an exclusive report on
the separatist Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), in
southeastern Ethiopia. Al-Jazeera continued to air the program. In
2007, Ethiopian authorities detained three New York Times journalists
for five days for reporting on the ONLF.

Local independent journalists who have reported on rebel groups have
landed in prison on various criminal charges, including publication or
distribution of "false news likely to incite violence" or "membership in
a terrorist organization." In one case, three journalists, Garuma
Bekele, Tesfaye Deressa, and Solomon Nemera of the defunct Oromo-
language weekly Urji, spent four years in prison over an article
challenging official claims about the killing of three alleged OLF
members by government forces. Numerous state-employed journalists
perceived to have sympathies for the OLF have also been thrown into
prison on spurious accusations, including former Ethiopian Television
News Director Dhabessa Wakjira.

On top of all that, Ethiopia recently enacted draconian anti-terror
legislation, which criminalizes any reporting the government deems
favorable to groups and causes it labels as "terrorist." In other words,
reporting the activities or statements of such groups could be
interpreted as glorifying or aiding their causes. An Ethiopian reporter,
who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisal,
told me there was no public government reaction to the NTV
controversy, and most local media did not report it. Another one said
independent coverage of such stories was difficult without a public
statement from the government. "You cannot initiate [such] stories if
there's no government reaction, else you run the risk of being labeled
as someone who's promoting their movement," he said.

Courtesy