VOA journalist released from jail in Eritrea
ASMARA, March 9 (AFP) — An Eritrean radio journalist working for the US-funded Voice of America who was imprisoned here for 18 months, officially for avoiding national service, has been released, officials said Wednesday.
In addition, another radio journalist, for the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle who stopped working in June 2004 under uncertain circumstances, has resumed broadcasting from Asmara, the officials said.
The VOA journalist, Aklilu Solomon, had been jailed “because he was trying to hide in order not to do his national service,” Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu told AFP, denying claims he was imprisoned because of his reporting.
On Monday, the press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said Solomon had been sent to prison because of a report he filed on Eritrean families grieving for the deaths of loved ones who served as soldiers in the 1998-2000 border war with Ethiopia.
RSF said that in contrast, Eritrean state media “reported that the announcement of ‘martyrs’ was greeted with cries of joy.”
Meanwhile, Abdu also denied reports that the Deutsche Welle journalist, Goitom Biahon, who resumed his reports late last month had ever been instructed not to work.
“Nobody asked him not to work,” he said.
A diplomat in Eritrea said the government has been angered by what it perceived as pro-Ethiopian reporting by Deutsche Welle and had suspended Biahon.
The US State Department last month said in its annual human rights report on Ertirea that Biahon was “reportedly arrested” and held without charges, an accusation that the reporter himself denied on Wednesday.
“It’s not true, I never went to prison,” Biahon told AFP.
Adbu denounced the information provided by the State Department as “a reflection of the characteristics of so-called human rights reports.”
According to RSF, at least 13 Eritrean journalists have been imprisoned in the country without trial since September 2001.
Asmara has said several times that those in jail are not journalists but “agents of the enemy,” and that a parliamentary commission is currently preparing a report on them.