IPI and partners call for immediate release of five imprisoned journalists

IPI is urging Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, pictured here in October 2013, to release imprisoned journalists and to reform the country’s anti-terrorism law. Tiksa Negeri/Reuters

VIENNA, Jan 14, 2014 – Ethiopia’s use of sweeping anti-terrorism law to imprison journalists and other legislative restrictions are hindering the development of free and independent media in Africa’s second largest country, according to a report published today by the International Press Institute (IPI).

Dozens of journalists and political activists have been arrested or sentenced under the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation of 2009, including five journalists who are serving prison sentences and who at times have been denied access to visitors and legal counsel. The report, “Press Freedom in Ethiopia”, is based on a mission to the country carried out in November by IPI and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).

Demonizing Ethiopian History by Prof. Al Mariam

The regime in power in Ethiopia today is orchestrating a full-court press demonization and vilification campaign against Atse Menelik II, the Nineteenth Century Ethiopian emperor whose centennial is being celebrated this year (Ethiopian calendar). The campaign is conducted largely through regime lackey-proxies, stooges and puppets. Through its minions, the regime has used the most loathsome words, inflammatory rhetoric and repugnant imagery to describe Menelik’s alleged brutality in his quest for territorial conquest. The regime’s servile drones have been all over social media parroting historical lies, distortions, fabrications, disinformation and falsehoods. The agitators have tried to whip up a propaganda frenzy in an attempt to caricature, demean and demonize the great Ethiopian leader. One hundred years after his death, they have tried to resurrect him as the devil incarnate. Barely two years after Meles Zenawi’s death they want to resurrect him as the savior of Ethiopia.

One need not be surprised by the volume or vehemence of the propaganda attack on Atse Menelik or the regime’s methodical and organized campaign to incite hatred and ill-will by trotting out Menelik’s Ghost.

Woyane’s jungle justices: Guilty until the evidence is manufactured?

January 11, 2014

When people get drunk on beer they become obnoxious but, by lust for power and money they become deadly. Playing zero-sum games of ‘us against them’ and ‘guilty until proven innocent by trumping on the rights and freedoms of our people is crude joke of diversions.

by Teshome Debalke

Ethiopia became a comedy club of TPLF‘s crude jokes In the last two decades but, nobody is laughing. It is another tragedy we as people are going through in our history where our rights became a commodity bought-and-sold by ethnic warlords.