As Zenawi speaks, editors grilled in Ethiopia

As Zenawi speaks, editors are grilled in Ethiopia

23 September, 2010 | By Mohamed Keita (CPJ Africa Advocacy
Coordinator)
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On Wednesday, just a few hours before Ethiopian Prime Minister
Meles Zenawi delivered the keynote address at the World Leaders'
Forum at New York's Columbia University, two journalists back in
Addis Ababa endured nearly seven hours of police interrogation.

Ethiopian federal police summoned the editors of Sendek, a weekly
Amharic-language newspaper, ostensibly to investigate whether the
paper has a publishing license. "We already have a license. I don't
know why they summoned us," Editor-in-Chief Firew Abebe, one
of the two, told me today. Local journalists believe Sendek and
three other private newspapers are drawing police attention
because they published interviews with an opposition leader named
Leggese Biratu.

In the interviews, Biratu, who recently resigned from a leadership
post in the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy, accused
party chairman Ayele Chamiso of aligning with Zenawi's ruling party.

Wednesday's interrogation is no aberration, CPJ research shows,
and it highlights the severe restrictions facing Ethiopian journalists
whenever they tackle sensitive political issues.

In his speech here in New York, Zenawi asserted that Africans
enjoy more freedom than ever in choosing their destiny. "The fact
that Africans now have a choice is ... fundamentally liberating," he
said.

Following the speech, in a Q&A session moderated by Mamadou
Diouf, director of Columbia's Institute of African Studies, I asked
Zenawi to reconcile the gap between his words and his
administration's record of press and Internet repression. "Should we
really take you at your word when your country is known to restrict
the press and the websites that Ethiopians might read?"

After a 10-second pause, Zenawi declared: "I think choice is
important and fundamental to every human being's free impression
of himself." Speaking of his days as a guerrilla freedom fighter, he
added "I believe I have contributed my fair share to fighting the
systems in Ethiopia that were unmistakably oppressive." He then
suggested critics in the Ethiopian press were disgruntled supporters
of the former Derg regime. "We had to step on some toes." When
someone else asked about the government's jamming of the
Amharic-language service of Voice of America, he said Ethiopia
was following the spirit of a 1940s U.S. law prohibiting VOA from
broadcasting domestically.

The prime minister faced tough questioning on other
issues--including his party's incredible 99-percent sweep of May
parliamentary elections and the imprisonment of opposition leader
Birtukan Mideksa. Zenawi said he appreciated the concerns of the
questioners but declared they had had "inadequate chance to
consider" the reality in his country.

Across Broadway, two rival groups of Ethiopian expatriates, a bus
load each, offered cheers and jeers for Zenawi--evidence, perhaps,
of the differences seen in the reality back home.

. Courtesy

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