Ethiopia / Africa

Hopes were high in July that Ivory Coast’s political crisis would end after a judge in the capital, Abidjan, confirmed that former prime minister Alassane Dramane Ouattara, the leader of the opposition Rally for Republicans (RDR), is an Ivory Coast citizen.

ETHIOPIA: New York, November 12, 2003—The Ethiopian Free Press Journalists’ Association (EFJA) has received a letter from the Justice Ministry, announcing that the organization is suspended, because of failure to comply with audit and licensing requirements. EFJA president, Kifle Mulat, says the organization is being targeted for political reasons, but the government says EFJA has…

Addis Ababa, July 25, 2002—After a five-day fact-finding mission to Ethiopia, a delegation from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has found that the Ethiopian government is planning alarming changes to the country’s 10-year-old press laws that would severely restrict the rights of Ethiopia’s already beleaguered private press corps. Although Information Minister Simon Bereket told…

Eritrea: FESSHAYE YOHANNES Languishing in prison since the fall of 2001, prominent Eritrean journalist Fesshaye Yohannes staged a hunger strike in May with nine other colleagues in hopes of spurring their release. Instead, government officials transferred the journalists to an undisclosed location–and no one has heard from them since. Fesshaye (who is also known as…

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned about the recent sentencing of Tewodros Kassa, former editor-in-chief of the Amharic-language weekly Ethiop, to two years’ imprisonment. Kassa is the second journalist to be convicted and jailed in Ethiopia during the last four months.

New York, July 18, 2002—Ahead of a mission scheduled to arrive in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, on Monday, July 22, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) today protested the sentencing of Tewodros Kassa, former editor-in-chief of the Amharic-language weekly Ethiop, to two years’ imprisonment. On July 10, Kassa was sentenced for violating Ethiopia’s restrictive Press…

Your Excellency: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is outraged by the ongoing prosecution and imprisonment of journalists in Ethiopia. We are particularly concerned about Lubaba Said and Melese Shine, two local journalists who are currently in jail for their work.

IN THE WAKE of September 11, 2001, journalists around the world faced a press freedom crisis that was truly global in scope. In the first days and weeks after the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., governments across the globe–in China, Benin, the Palestinian Authority Territories, and the United States–took actions to…

Silence reigned supreme in Eritrea, where the entire independent press was under a government ban and 11 journalists languished in jail at year’s end. Clamorous, deadly power struggles raged in Zimbabwe over land and access to information, and in Burundi over ethnicity and control of state resources. South Africa, Senegal, and Benin remained relatively liberal…