Press CPJ condemns Ethiopian editor’s defamation conviction
Dec 8, 2005 (ADDIS ABABA) — An international press freedom watchdog on Thursday condemned the conviction and eight-month prison sentence handed down to an Ethiopian newspaper editor under the country’s tough media laws.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it was “outraged” by Tuesday’s Federal High Court conviction of Wosonseged Gebrekidan who was accused of defaming an Ethiopian diplomat in a 2002 opinion piece.
It said the verdict and sentence were part of an ongoing campaign of repression against independent media in Ethiopia, launched in part after political unrest erupted after disputed elections earlier this year.
“We are outraged at the prison sentence given to Wosonseged Gebrekidan, and at the continued imprisonment of at least 12 other journalists,” CPJ chief Ann Cooper said in a statement.
“We call on the Ethiopian authorities to release all of them and stop this disastrous crackdown on the media,” she said.
Wosonseged, the former editor of the Amharic-language weekly Ethiop, did not write the article but was found guilty under the Ethiopia’s 1992 Press Proclamation, a criminal libel statute that holds editors responsible for the content of their newspapers.
The offending piece had chastised diplomat Habtemariam Seyoum for praising Ethiopian diplomacy with arch-rival neighbor Eritrea and vowing to uphold a peace deal that ended a bloody two-year border war between the countries, according to CPJ.
Wosonseged is among 13 journalists who have been in custody since early November, when deadly political violence convulsed the Ethiopian capital and provincial towns amid protests over alleged fraud in May elections.
The November unrest was the second round of deadly election-related violence and both times the government has responded by rounding up opposition figures and journalists seen as sympathetic to their cause.
None of the other detained journalists or opposition leaders have yet been charged although Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has said they may be tried for treason.
(AFP/ST)