The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has announced that there has been a significant decline in press freedom in Ethiopia over the past five years.
Presenting its five-year review of press freedom in Ethiopia to the UN’s Human Rights Council on Tuesday, CPJ said it reported numerous arrests and arbitrary detentions of journalists in the east African nation.
CPJ in its report noted a significant decline in press freedom since Ethiopia’s last Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and offers recommendations to the Ethiopian government to end ongoing media repression.
The report detailed the arbitrary detention, physical violence, harassment, and severe legal restrictions, worsening the press freedom situation in the country.
The report also addressed the lack of accountability in the killings of two journalists, physical assaults on media professionals, forced closures of media outlets, and restrictions on international journalists.
“Despite reforms over the last five years, Ethiopia’s media and anti-terror laws retain provisions that have been used to persecute dissenting voices, to justify media closures, and as pretext for the expulsion of foreign journalists,” the report said.
Ethiopia ranked among the top three worst jailers of journalists in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2020, 2021and 2023, according to CPJ’s annual Prison Census, a snapshot of journalists behind bars on December 1 each year.
MG/as/APA