Ethiopia detains journalist for US-based website
Jan 31, 2006 (ADDIS ABABA) — Ethiopia’s police have detained a journalist for a US-based website critical of the government, tightening a clampdown on independent media, a press freedom watchdog said Tuesday.
Frezer Negash, who works for the online Ethiopian Review, was arrested on Friday and is being held without charge in Addis Ababa, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a statement.
“We are disturbed that Frezer Negash has joined at least 16 other journalists in jail in Ethiopia,” it said, citing Ethiopian Review publisher Elias Kifle and two other sources for the information about her arrest.
“We call on Ethiopian authorities to release her immediately,” the group said in a statement received here.
The CPJ said Frezer, who unsuccessfully ran for parliament in last year’s disputed elections and was an accredited journalist, had been threatened for her work on the website, which is “extremely critical of the government.”
The arrest of Frezer, who lives in the United States, comes amid a widespread crackdown on opposition leaders who are accused of fomenting a coup in the wake of the May 2005 elections and suspected sympathizers.
A group of 131 prominent government foes, independent journalists and aid workers, including nearly the entire leadership of the main opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) and five broadcasters with the US-funded Voice of America, now face treason and other serious charges.
Kifle, the Ethiopian Review publisher, and the VoA employees are among more than a dozen Ethiopian journalists working overseas who have been charged in absentia over the alleged coup plot.
Last week, Ethiopia expelled Anthony Mitchell, a British journalist working for the US news agency Associated Press, for allegedly “tarnishing the image of the nation” in his reports from the Horn of Africa nation.
The crackdown began in November after a second explosion of violence in the capital during protests against alleged ruling party fraud in the May 15 polls.
At least 84 people were killed in November and election-related unrest in June when police opened fire on crowds during demonstrations that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi were intended to foment a coup.
The crackdown has sparked international concern about the state of democracy in Ethiopia and several leading donors have withheld millions of dollars in direct aid to the government, reprogramming it to humanitarian relief.
(ST)