The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Thursday said Ethiopian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release all journalists held in custody for their work and should refrain from using the country’s state of emergency law to imprison members of the press.
Ethiopian authorities have arrested at least 14 journalists since declaring a state of emergency on November 2 as part of the government’s response to a year-long civil war against rebel forces allied with the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front (TPLF).
“Ethiopia’s state of emergency law gives security personnel extremely broad powers of arrest and suspends due process, effectively bans critical journalism, and sends an intimidating message to the press,” said CPJ’s sub-Saharan Africa representative, Muthoki Mumo.
“The Ethiopian government should release all journalists detained for their work and stop using the state of emergency as a pretext to infringe on freedom of expression,” Mumo said.
In a December 15 phone interview with CPJ, federal police spokesperson Jeylan said that the journalists were detained for violating the laws of the country, not for their professional work. Jeylan declined to provide specifics about which laws the journalists allegedly breached, and referred CPJ to the Ministry of Justice for comment.
CPJ emailed and sent Facebook messages to the Ministry of Justice, but did not receive any immediate replies. CPJ repeatedly called the ministry, but the calls rang unanswered or were busy.
CPJ’s 2021 prison census ranked Ethiopia as sub-Saharan Africa’s second-worst jailer after documenting at least nine journalists in custody there as of December 1 — either because CPJ did not have details of their arrests or because they were arrested after that date. None of the eight journalists reportedly appeared before court.
MG/abj/APA