By Eshete Bekele | for Deutsche Welle (DW), The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has awarded its International Press Freedom Award to six Ethiopian bloggers who served more than a year in Ethiopia’s notorious prisons. Until the Zone 9 bloggers suddenly appeared on the Addis Ababa web scene under the motto “We Blog Because We […]
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By Sarah Myers West, THE simple act of taking steps to protect oneself online is enough to send a journalist to jail, according to charges issued by Ethiopian prosecutors in several cases to be heard this week. An Ethiopian court will soon hand down verdicts in a number of cases where criminal charges could be […]
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By Felix Horne (for Al Jazeera), THIS is what an election campaign looks like in Ethiopia, where the ruling coalition took 99.6 percent of parliamentary seats in the last national elections, in 2010. Jirata, not his real name, is a 19-year-old student who was campaigning for a legally registered opposition party recently, when security officials […]
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By Marie Harf (Acting Spokesperson), U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE Office of the Spokesperson Washington, D.C. April 24, 2015 APRIL 25 marks one year since Ethiopia arrested six Zone 9 bloggers and three other journalists. These nine individuals—Befekadu Hailu, Zelalem Kibret, Atnaf Berhane, Natnael Feleke, Mahlet Fantahun, Abel Wabella, Asmamaw Hailegiorgis, Edom Kassaye, and Tesfalem Waldeyes—joined […]
Continue ReadingBy Abebe Gelaw, ETHIOPIA’s Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn faced a stinging humiliation as Azusa Pacific University (APU), whose motto is “God First”, has withdrawn an honor it had already bestowed on him. The university administration had to reverse its decision to honor Mr. Desalegn in light of gross human rights violations in Ethiopia being perpetrated by […]
Continue ReadingBy AFP, A GROUP of Ethiopian bloggers and journalists detained for nearly three months have been charged with terrorism for having links to an outlawed group and for planning attacks, a judge said Friday. The seven members of the blogging collective Zone Nine and three journalists were arrested in April, prompting an outcry from rights groups […]
Continue ReadingBy TesfaNews, WILLIAM EASTERLY is a renowned economist and best-selling author of the book ” The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators and the Forgotten rights of the poor“. In his latest interview with PBS talk show presenter Tavis Smiley, he makes his case for a radical rethinking of approaches to global development. He brought the case of […]
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