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

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

By Mohamed Hassim Keita/Africa Research Associate
26 June, 2009 (CPJ) - This week, in an exclusive interview with the Financial
Times, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi suggested that the press in his
country freely expresses dissent. In fact, that is hardly the case. The Horn of Africa
nation remains one of the world's worst backsliders of press freedom.

Asked whether a series of recent arrests

of political dissidents and legislation on

civil society organizations and terrorism

had "contributed to an atmosphere where

people do not feel free to speak," the

prime minister responded: "Have you read

the local newspapers? Do they mince their

words about government?"

A multitude of private, political

newspapers filled the newsstands in the

capital, Addis Ababa--until November

2005. Then, in the midst of deadly unrest

following disputed elections, authorities

imprisoned

the editors of these

publications on antistate charges, blaming the violence on their headlines. The
government either banned the titles or induced enough fear that printers were
dissuaded from printing the newspapers.

When I put the prime minister's response to Dawit Kebede, who launched the
weekly Awramba Times after spending nine months in prison for his critical
coverage in 2005, he chuckled softly. "The facts and his argument are totally
opposite," he said, citing self-censorship among the handful of authorized private
newspapers venturing into current affairs coverage these days. "Before the 2005
elections, there were a lot of newspapers. Today, we can say there are may be two
or three genuinely independent (political) newspapers for a population of 80 million."
Independent in this sense means media outlets not owned by the government or its
supporters.

The comments of the prime minister (who, by the way, also told the Financial
Times he wants to step down if his supporters will let him) are often out of step
with his government's actions. "I don't think people have any qualms about
criticizing the government or rejecting its policies, or expressing dissenting views in
any way," the business weekly Addis Fortune quoted him as saying in 2007. Yet,
since then, the government has threatened, harassed, and imprisoned journalists,
blocked the distribution of newspapers and access to Web sites. Speaking to
Newsweek in April 2008, Zenawi said the government was enacting "a new press law
that we very much hope will put our legislation on par with the best in the world."
Instead, the law was hastily passed with repressive statutes that fall well short of
international standards.

In 2007, Zenawi declared that pardons issued to imprisoned journalists and
dissidents showed the government had "no sense of revenge." Its tolerance, though,
is limited: The government has denied licenses to three publishers who were among
those once imprisoned.

Other independent journalists in Addis Ababa spoke to me on condition of anonymity
for fear of government reprisals--a practice that has apparently become the norm for
many of their sources. "If you want to interview a university lecturer (on a sensitive
issue), one of the first things you hear is, 'Don't mention my name. I don't want to
say these things in public,'" according to one veteran reporter. "Always we say
'person doesn't want his name to be mentioned.' It's a challenge." Another reporter
told me that this practice has led some readers to doubt the credibility of stories in
the newspapers. "The government always says they're trying to be transparent and
make a comfortable environment for media. Practically it's not the case," the veteran
reporter said.
Courtesy