ADDIS ABABA – The government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has cut off Internet access to journalists working for the state-owned Ethiopian News Agency (ENA), a source told EthioMedia on Monday.
“Journalists were accessing Internet resources before and shortly after the May 2005 election in which the two opposition parties – Kinijit (CUDP) and Hibret (UEDF) won signficant parliamentary seats that would have brought an end to the tyrannical regime in a legal and peaceway,” the source said.
Heightened interests of journalists on commentaries supporting opposition views were a source of concern for ENA manager Hadush Kassu, a government political cadre known more for his “harsh administrative measures” than for anything remotely related to journalism, the source said. “He imposed a government ban on accesssing Internet resources.”
Whether in ENA, or TV or Radio, press freedom is drastically curtailed. In fact, it would be a disservice to the concept of press freedom to say there is any semblance of it. “We live like in a labor camp and our work is to broadcast what is virtually dictated to us by political appointees of the ruling regime,” one Radio reporter said.
Political cadres the government calls “journalists” and working for such propaganda outlets as “Walta Information Center” and “Radio Fana” certainly have access to the Internet because these are loyal cadres of the regime, and their main staple is to prey on the works of Ethiopian scholars being published on a website like EthioMedia, which doubtless is the country’s most trusted website.”
Meanwhile, the Ethiopian Herald reported April 16 that The Ethiopian National Journalists Union (ENJU) was – after years of slumber – established anew to strive for the respect of the rights of journalists.
Media observers, however, say ENJU has little or no value to help Press Freedom evolve in the country.
“ENJU was first formed in the mid-’90s to weaken what was then up-and-coming Ethiopian Free Journalists Association (EFJA), a group which, though smaller in size, had done much more to the respect of the rights of journalists than its amorphous counterpart entirely controlled by the government,” one media critic said.
About 15 EFJA members are now in jail on fabricated charges of “treason and genocide,” while its president, Kifle Mulat, remains in exile while being tried in absentia for the same fictitious charges of the highest degree.
