Ethiopian Government Rejects Rights-Group Criticism Over Arrests
September 16, 2011, 9:37 AM EDTBy William Davison
Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Ethiopia’s government rejected accusations by a human-rights group that it’s suppressing dissent, following the arrests of a reporter and four opposition politicians this week.
The detentions came after three other journalists and two opponents of the ruling party were charged by the authorities in the Horn of Africa nation on Sept. 6. Those being held were “leading a plan to throw the country into serious political chaos through a series of terrorist acts,” Shimeles Kemal, minister of state at the Communications Ministry, said in an interview today in Addis Ababa, the capital.
Amnesty International, the London-based advocacy group, said in an e-mailed statement yesterday the arrests signified the Ethiopian government is “intent on destroying the last vestiges of free expression in Ethiopia” and were “a chilling warning to other opposition politicians and journalists.”
Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous nation and the continent’s biggest coffee grower, adopted anti-terrorism laws in 2009 that groups including Human Rights Watch have described as “restrictive and vague.” Last year, the country jailed the second-highest number of journalists on the continent, after neighboring Eritrea, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, the New York-based advocacy group.
The group of people arrested planned to carry out attacks in the Ethiopian year that began on Sept. 12, Shimeles said. The plot was “sponsored and contrived” by the banned Ginbot 7 organization, Shimeles said. Ginbot 7 is led by the exiled former elected mayor of Addis Ababa, Berhanu Nega.
Arrests
The deputy chairman of the opposition Unity for Democracy and Justice party, Andualem Arage, and reporter Eskinder Nega were arrested on Sept. 14 along with three other politicians, Shimeles said.
“Ethiopia does not espouse a policy to criminalize dissent,” he said. “The right to dissent is a constitutionally- entrenched right.” As many as 100 politicians and five journalists have been arrested since March, according to Amnesty.
“UDJ has never been and never will be a den for people who promote acts of terrorism,” the party said in a statement handed to reporters today at a press conference in Addis Ababa. “The ruling regime must know that it cannot stop the forward march of the struggle for freedom and democracy by trying to engulf the people in fear.”
--Editors: Paul Richardson, Karl Maier.
To contact the reporter on this story: William Davison in Addis Ababa via Nairobi at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Richardson in Nairobi at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.
