It would
be hard to find a better symbol of media repression in Africa than EskinderNega. The veteran
Ethiopian journalist and dissident blogger has been detained at least seven
times by Prime Minister MelesZenawi’s
government over the past two decades, and was put back in
jail on September 14, 2011, after he published a column calling for the
government to respect freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and to end
torture in prisons.
Eskinder now faces terrorism charges, and if
convicted could face the death sentence. He’s not alone: Ethiopia currently has seven journalists behind
bars. More journalists have fled Ethiopia over
the past decade than any other country in the world, according to CPJ.
Eskinder could easily have joined them. In
February 2011, he was briefly detained by federal police
and warned to stop writing critical stories about Ethiopia’s authoritarian
regime. The message was clear: it’s time to leave. Eskinder
spent part of his childhood in the Washington D.C. area, and could have
returned to the U.S.
He didn’t.
Instead he continued to publish online columns demanding
an end to corruption and political repression and calling for the security
forces not to shoot unarmed demonstrators (as they did in 2005) in
the event the Arab Spring spread to Ethiopia. That’s landed him back in
jail–where he could remain for years in the event he avoids a death sentence.
Since then
a group of journalists, authors and rights activists have organized a petition calling for the
release of Eskinder and other journalists unjustly
detained by Ethiopia’s government. Among the signatories are the heads of the
U.S. National Press Club, the Open Society Foundations, Human Rights Watch and
the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The
petitioners also include MaziarBahari,
the Newsweek journalist jailed
by the Iranian government for four months in 2009; three former BBC
correspondents in Ethiopia; development economist William Easterly; the Christian
Science Monitor‘s Marshall Ingwerson and others.
The
campaign also included a letter published in The New
York Review of Books, contacts with the U.S. State Department, press
releases, and media interviews. Still, making an impact is difficult. Eskinder was just one of 179 journalists jailed worldwide
as of December 1, 2011, according to CPJ data. In addition, Ethiopia is viewed
as a strategic partner for the West in combating terrorism and instability in
East Africa, making Western governments less likely to press Zenawi on human rights abuses.
People
have asked me why we should try to help someone who could have saved himself by
fleeing the country. It’s a good question. I suspect that even if he were to be
released tomorrow, Eskinder would stay in Ethiopia
and continue writing and publishing online–at the risk of being thrown back in
jail.
After all,
this is a reporter whose wife, journalist Serkalem Fasil, gave birth while they were both in jail following the 2005
elections. When they were released in 2007, Serkalem
and Eskinder were banned from reopening their
newspapers. To survive, they rented their house in central Addis Ababa to a
team of Chinese telecom workers and moved to a poor neighborhood on the
outskirts of the city.
Like many
good journalists, Eskinder is stubborn to a fault.
Standing for free speech in Ethiopia can seem a Sisyphean task, but if Eskinder is principled enough to risk more years in jail –
and possibly the death sentence – it’s our obligation to stand with him.
— Jason McLure was Bloomberg News correspondent in Ethiopia from 2007 to 2010.
