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Influential senator slams Zenawi for assault on press

Posted on , Updated on by Negash

US senator condemns Ethiopia’s persecution of the press

By Mohamed Keita | Committee to Protect Journalists

June 15, 2012.

On Wednesday, the same day the White House announced a strategic plan committing the United States to elevating its efforts in “challenging leaders whose actions threaten the credibility of democratic processes” in sub-Saharan Africa, a senior member of the U.S. Congress challenged the erosion of press freedom in a key U.S. strategic partner in the Horn of Africa: Ethiopia.

Underscoring the importance of Ethiopia as an important partner for the United States in containing terrorism and ending poverty and famine in the region, Senator Patrick Leahy, a democrat from Vermont, published on Thursday a statement in The Congressional Record, the official daily journal of U.S. Congress, in which he condemned the assault on the freedom of the Ethiopian press under Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. The senator argued that success for the Obama administration’s new partnership with Meles on food security depends on “broad national consultation, transparency, and accountability,” values, he said, that “depend in no small part on a free press.”

Leahy highlighted the emblematic case of Ethiopia’s most prominent imprisoned journalist and blogger, Eskinder Nega. Eskinder, whom PEN American Center honored this year with the Freedom to Write Award, could be convicted on June 21 on vague terrorism charges that carry a life sentence “simply for refusing to remain silent about the Ethiopian government’s increasingly authoritarian drift.” Five days prior to his arrest in September 2011, Eskinder had published an article criticizing the Meles administration “for misusing a vaguely-worded 2009 antiterrorism law to jail journalists and political opponents,” Leahy said.

In public statements and state media, Ethiopian government officials have sought to discredit Eskinder and the other 10 journalists, calling them terrorist accomplices involved in anti-state activities.

The evidence offered against the journalist in court, Leahy said, included “a video of a town hall meeting in which Eskinder discusses the Arab Spring and speculates on whether similar protests were possible in Ethiopia.” The journalist also consistently highlighted “the government’s denial of human rights, and call[ed] for an end to political repression and corruption” despite being jailed seven times, his wife imprisoned, and his newspapers repeatedly banned over two decades, Leahy said.

Leahy was the third member of Congress, after Alaska Senator Mark Begich and California Representative Edward Royce, to publicly voice concern over the persecution of 11 Ethiopian journalists “for questioning government actions and policies–activities that you and I and people around the world would recognize as fundamental to any free press,” he wrote. He added, “Ironically, by trying to silence those who do not toe the official line, the government is only helping to underscore the concerns that many inside and outside of Ethiopia share about the deterioration of democracy and human rights in that country.”

In the statement, Leahy, the chairman of a sub-committee responsible for funding portions of U.S. assistance to foreign countries, said the “importance of respecting freedom of the press cannot be overstated” in the disbursement of aid to the government.

6 thoughts on “Influential senator slams Zenawi for assault on press”

  1. It is obvious that Obama is the least concerned individual about human rights conditions in Ethiopia. He even invited the dictator, a certified genocidal dictator, to G8 meeting.

    It is even puzzling when the president was a Senator from Chicago, he voted/signed in support of the HR-????(I forgot the number) bill drafted to limit Zenawi & co’s rights in America. How soon he forgot is beyond me.

  2. “by trying to silence those who do not toe the official line, the government is only helping to underscore the concerns that many inside and outside of Ethiopia share about the deterioration of democracy and human rights in that country.”

    that is exactly what we have been saying for years. They are just waking up now? It is not that they did not know but they are not sure if there will be a stable government that would help them in the fight against terrorism in the Horn of Africa. But the same government they are trusting is using the so called anti-terrorism law against innocent Ethiopians who themselves are against any kind of terrorism inside or outside Ethiopia. What the TPLF government is doing is using as its weapon to silence the democratic and human rights activists who speak out against its policies of corruption, discrimination, oppression, and exploitation of the country and its people.

    Like all corrupt governments it will end and it will be soon. The Americans will never be short of friends but Meles is not a good friend. They know it and they are waiting until they see the strength of the opposition.

    Abera replies:
    June 16th, 2012 at 9:39 AM

    It is very true Saba. I think the opposition is maturing now. The political activists in Ethiopia have not reached the stage where they themselves practice the difficult system of democracy. The politicians in other countries even few in Africa( Ghana, South Africa) and Latin America are more understanding of each other’s strength and limitations. So they all work for the benefit of their countries not for their parties or themselves and their supporters.
    The TPLF government is making it out that the Amharas and Oromos are against Tigres. I think even if we are way behind in political maturity many people believe that Ethiopia can not be ruled based on ethnicity. They are the ones who are doing it. And as long as their so called Woyane party filled with uneducated and ignorant individuals from Tigre are in power they are going to face opposition. It is a reality of history that any one in power that oppresses others will go down miserably.

    Don’t forget these people were all used to be communists and specially Albanian style communists and now it is Chinese style communists that controls everything for itself and its supporters and oppress the rest. They probably have few million members who are just following them and they are leading them to hell. Change will come and they will be left alone.

  3. When B. H. Obama beat Hillary Rodham Clinton in the early Democratic Primaries, a visibly shocked and worried Bill Clinton commented that the passage of generation, the dying off the older generation, and the change of demography was to be blamed for Obama’s unexpected surge and victory. It is great for Patrick Leahy and other old guards in the Senate and the House to uphold the noble causes, the light on the top of the hill, giving the world the hope they never had (present day Ethiopia) or reminding the freedom they always had but never appreciated (in the case of old Ethiopia). It is frightening to think what would happen to the world when the religious, upright, righteous etc pass on. Change of course is relative in Ethiopia. The sinful and rebellious of us, to be honest, who do away with the great era where health care and school were free and national cohesiveness at all time high, might even deserve the current homeless banishment and third-class citizenship at home. Since the current generation has nothing to do with the violence, the rebellion and power usurpation, the theory goes that it must have been the children-gens of rebels.

    ….Harder to measure has been damage to Myanmar’s complex multiethnic fabric as the government of President Thein Sein tries to steer the country toward reconciliation between the military and the people, and between the Bamar majority and the dozens of smaller ethnic groups. So far, the violence has been limited to Rakhine, which is relatively isolated from the rest of the country by a mountain range. But many among those who have posted angry comments on Internet sites have equated the Rohingya with other Muslims scattered around Myanmar. In Yangon, Myanmar’s main city, worshipers at mosques reported that prayer services left out traditional Friday sermons as a precaution against widening the sectarian conflict. The issue of the Rohingya is so delicate that even Myanmar’s leading defender of human rights and democracy, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has been oblique and evasive about the situation. Asked at a news conference on Thursday whether the estimated 800,000 Rohingyas in Myanmar should be given citizenship, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was equivocal. “We have to be very clear about what the laws of citizenship are and who are entitled to them,” she said in Geneva, which she was visiting as part of a European tour. “All those who are entitled to citizenship should be treated as full citizens deserving all the rights that must be given to them.” Defending the Rohingya, who are stateless and are described by the United Nations as one of the most oppressed minorities in Asia, is politically risky for both Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and Mr. Thein Sein. Mr. Thein Sein’s government is trying to rein in the news media to limit violence against the Rohingya. A popular publication called Hlyat Ta Pyet was banned this week for an indefinite period after it published what the government judged to be inflammatory coverage of the violence in Rakhine, said U Maung Myint, president of the Burma Media Association, which advocates media freedom. The government has also ordered that all Rakhine-related news go through the censorship board, a rollback to the procedures during military rule. “This is the worst moment for media since the ‘civilian’ government assumed power,” Mr. Maung Myint said. The Internet, however, has remained unfettered — and heavily tilted against the Rohingya. On Facebook and on news sites, there appeared to be very few comments this week defending the Rohingya or calling for reconciliation. A United Nations report published in December described the Rohingya as “virtually friendless” among other ethnic groups in Myanmar. That is a polite assessment. The source of the hatred toward the Rohingya is complex but appears to turn on religion, language, colonial resentment, nationalism and skin color. In 2009, a Burmese diplomat who was then consul general in Hong Kong sent a letter to local newspapers and other diplomatic missions calling the Rohingya “ugly as ogres.” The diplomat, U Ye Myint Aung, compared the “dark brown” complexion of Rohingyas with the “fair and soft” skin of the majority of people in Myanmar. The Rohingya are often called “Bengali” by their opponents in Myanmar, a term that suggests that they belong in India or Bangladesh. Although they have been denied citizenship and are subjected to “forced labor, extortion, restriction on freedom of movement, the absence of residence rights, inequitable marriage regulations and land confiscation,” according to the United Nations, the government has allowed many of them to vote, including in the country’s first elections after military rule, in 2010. Like the Roma (Gypsies) of Europe, they are not wanted in either Myanmar or neighboring Bangladesh. United Nations officials in Geneva said Friday that Bangladeshi border guards were pushing back boatloads of people trying to flee. The boats, laden with women, children and others wounded in the violence, have been left drifting in the broad Naf River delta between the two countries, short of food and water, said the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The provenance of the Rohingya is as difficult to trace as that of many of Myanmar’s other ethnic groups: they appear to be a mixture of Arabs, Moors, Turks, Persians, Moguls and Pathans, according to the United Nations. Myanmar’s government counts more than 130 ethnicities in the country. The Rohingya are not on that list. Many online commentators in Myanmar have called for the expulsion of the Rohingya — or worse. When the Eleven Media Group reported Thursday that a woman’s corpse was spotted floating in a river, but did not disclose the ethnicity of the victim, one reader said he was confused. “I don’t know if I should be happy or sad,” he said, “because I don’t know what nationality she is.”

    – June 15, 2012, BANGKOK – Internet Unshackled, Burmese Aim Venom at Ethnic Minority By THOMAS FULLER

    Poypiti Amatatham contributed reporting from Bangkok, and Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva. ¥

  4. This is very encouraging news. However, we Ethiopians need to stop looking to the Western world for deliverance. One thing we have to remember is however well intentioned, Western powers always put their National Security Interests first. Our country will never be free of Meles’ tyranny unless more and more Ethiopians follow the leads of courageous Ethiopians like Eskinder Nega. The courageous of Eskinder and other heroes of our generation strike more fear in the hearts of the Woyanne junta than any article written by a US Senator.

  5. Woyane’s policies have been chocking people. Though it took 20 years for the oppostion to wake up and mature, it is weyane’s own deteriotating policies that are galvanizing the struggle to overthrow the dictator. It is so funny to see how woyane is going to bed and how the opposition is just waking from sleep. Now that everyone and everything is connected like a spider web, they have no way out of this. Surrender is the only option.

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