From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Mon Apr 12 2010 - 06:31:27 EDT
100 flowers of repression bloom as Ethiopia moves to gag press ahead of
elections
By BEN RAWLENCE
Posted Monday, April 12 2010 at 00:00
Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, admitted this month that his
government had jammed Voice of America's broadcasting in the country's
Amharic language.
The reasons Meles provided for targeting the station were outrageous, even
by Ethiopian standards.
He likened the VOA, the US international public information broadcaster with
a track record of professional reporting, to the Radio Television Libre des
Mille Collines (RTLM) - the infamous radio station that incited violence
throughout the Rwandan genocide.
Yet the comments provide an important glimpse of the ugly inner workings of
the ruling Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front.
The Ethiopian government has a long history of silencing the media and
stifling dissent. VOA officials say their Amharic broadcasts were also
jammed in 2005 and 2008.
In both cases, elections were at stake. Now that the 2010 electoral season
is in full gear, the Ethiopian government is at it again.
New legal restrictions limit the ability of independent Ethiopian groups to
monitor the elections; to date, only government-affiliated organisations
have been licensed.
A recent electoral code of conduct for the media forbids them from
interviewing voters, candidates and officials on Election Day.
And election observers are barred from making any kind of statement until
election results are announced. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.
In a new report, One Hundred Ways of Putting Pressure: Violations of Freedom
Expression and Association in Ethiopia, Human Rights Watch documents the
myriad ways in which the Ethiopian government is muzzling critics, jailing
opponents and exercising control over civil servants in an effort to
maintain control.
At the village level, people know that openly supporting the opposition can
lead to persecution and the withholding of government services, jobs and
educational opportunities.
In addition, the Ethiopian government has enacted an arsenal of repressive
laws in recent years to deflect independent criticism.
The most disingenuous of those laws is the "Charities and Societies
Proclamation."
Under this law, the government has tightly restricted non-governmental
activity in areas deemed sensitive like human rights, governance, and even
advocacy for the rights of women, children and people with disabilities.
The practical result is simple: Independent human-rights work is quickly
disappearing in Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Council, one of the most effective and
professional human-rights groups in Africa, tried to operate under the new
law.
But after the government unlawfully froze its bank accounts and threatened
its staff, it closed all but three of its offices and half its investigators
fled the country.
Under an anti-terrorism law passed last year, legitimate peaceful protest
and dissent can be considered terrorism and critical reporting by the media
can easily get labelled as "encouraging terrorism."
The editors of Ethiopia's leading independent newspaper, Addis Neger, closed
the paper and fled the country after repeated threats that they would be
prosecuted under this law.
The Ethiopian government tried last year to impose its awkward definition of
terrorism across the border after a Kenyan television station broadcast a
programme on the rebel Oromo Liberation Front.
Fortunately, the Nation Media Group in Kenya refused Ethiopia's demands to
stop the broadcast.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the only African country
with more journalists behind bars than Ethiopia is its archrival, Eritrea.
The Ethiopian journalists languish in jail along with at least nine
opposition leaders detained following the crackdown after the 2005
elections.
The most prominent among them is Birtukan Midekssa, the young, charismatic
leader of the Unity for Democracy and Justice Party, pardoned in 2007 but
re-arrested and returned to jail in 2008. She is fast becoming one of
Africa's most celebrated political prisoners.
Keeping Birtukan behind bars, tightening the screws on non-governmental
organisations and jamming VOA are just some of the "100 ways" in which the
government is putting pressure on the opposition and exacting a high price
from those who dare to criticise the government.
Ethiopia's influential foreign donors on the other hand have every
opportunity to raise their voices against the Ethiopian government's growing
repression ahead of the parliamentary elections in May. They should do so
loudly and clearly.
Ben Rawlence is a researcher with Human Rights Watch.
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